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©
NOTES ^ND, ESSAYS
ON
SHAKESPEARE
V/-
BY
* JOHN W. HALES/ M.A.
PROFESSOR OF ENC^ISH LITERATURE IN KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON ;
LATF, FELLOW OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
LONDON
GEORGE BELL AND SONS, YORK STREET
COVENT GARDEN
,1884,.
\jfc)
NOV 8 1906
C
^
. I . . ■ r)
HARVARD'
UNIVERSITY
LJBRARY
CHISWICK PRESS :— C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COURT,
CHANCERY LANE.
• I, Oppidans Road,
Primrose Hill, London.
May 19M, 1884.
My dear Seeley,
When I asked you to let me connect this booklet
with your name, you replied at once : " You surely cannot
doubt for a moment that I shall think your dedication a
great honour." No words could be kinder; few, if any,
could make .me prouder. Only, would they were better
deservfed !
I have always thought, and shall always think, your friend-
ship, enjoyed ever since I a Freshman looked up with
reverence to you a * Senior Soph',- as one of the chief plea-
. sures and distinctions and blessings of my life.
And so it is with no ordinary satisfaction that I avail
^nyself of your permission to inscribe this volume to you. .
•
Believe me^ my dear Seeley,
To be always
Very sincerely yours,
John W. Hales.
To J. R. Seeley, Esq., LL.D.,
Regius Professor of Modem History in the
' University of Cambridge,
PREFACE.
I AM so often asked by pupils and friends, and also, by
strangers, where copies of my paper on King Lear (see
below, page 242) and of certain other Shakespearean papers
of mine are to be found, that it has seemed advisable to
make a small collection of such things and issue them in a
separate volume.
The austerest .and grimmest critic will not feel more
keenly than their author that they might be, and indeed
ought to be, much worthier of reproduction. For many
years now, Shakespeare's Works have been one of my
special studies; and I have been hoping for some con-
venient season when I could try to put into some complete
shape the results, such as they are,- of those studies. Buf
the convenient season has not yet, and perhaps may never,
come. So it seems best to do what one may at once instead
of waiting for more leisure — ^waiting, like Horace's rustic,
for the tide of other engagements and occupations to cease
flowing.
" At ille
Labitur et labetur.'*
Certainly, no one could be more conscious of the great-
ness of the subject, however slight and fragmentary the
articles here gathered together. I will venture to quote to
Yin
PREFACE,
this effect from myself a paragraph Which I was particularly
pleased to see that that excellent scholar and most kindly
and courteous, gentleman Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, had, with-
out knowing who wrote it, adopted as the motto of his
valuable Memoranda on the Tragedy of Hamlet : " The fact
is the subject is simply inexhaustible. The study of Shake-
speare is as the study of Nature herself whose favourite son
he was. And the best of Shakespeare students, if we ask
him, as Charmian asked the Soothsayer, * Is't you, sir, that
know things ? ' will reply, the more humbly and sincerely
the better he is,
* In Nature's infinite book of secrecy
A little I can read.'
• *A little I can read' — that is all the truly competent
scholar will dare to say."
To certain friends who have kindlily assisted me in cor-
recting " proofs," and to various editors and others for the
courteous way in which they received my mention of the
proposal here executed, I tender my heartiest thanks.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. From Stratford-on-Avon to London. (From the Corn-
hill Magazine) I
II. Round about Stratford in 1605. (From Fraser^s
Magazine) ........ 25
III. Chaucer and Shakespeare. (From the Quarterly
Reinew) 56
IV. Shakespeare's Greek Names, (From the Comhill
Magazine) 105
— V. YizzMit^s Shakespeare's Library, {FroraXYiG Athenaum) 120
— VI, Mr. and Mrs. Cowden Clarke's Shakespeare Key,
(From the Athenceum) 129
— VII. 'Dr.'Elzxi^s Essays on Shakespeare, {From ihQ Academy) 134
VIII. Some Conditions of the Elizabethan Drama. (From
the Saturday Review) 145
— IX. Mr. Halliwoll-Phillipps' Papers referring to Shake-
speare, (From the Athenceum) , . . .152
-r— X. Mrs. Fumess' Concordance to Shakespeare^ s Poems,
(From the Academy and the Athenceum) . .165
XI. Dr. Schmidt's Shakespeare- Leocicon, (From the
Academy and the Athenceum) , . . • 174
-^ XII. Shakespeare Scenes and Characters, (From the
Academy) 185
* XIII. Bell's, and Singer's Editions di Shakespeare^ s Dramatic
Works ; and Mr. Watkiss Lloyd's Critical Essays
on Shakespeare, (From the Academy) . . .189
XIV. Shakespeare and Satire. (From the Antiquary) , 198
XV. Milton's familiarity with Shakespeare's Plays. (From
the Athenceum) - . . 201
■— XVI. King Richard the Second, (From the Academy) . 205
XVII. Wily Beguiled and The Merchant of Venice, (From
the Athenceum) 209
b
X CONTENTS.
PACiK
XVIII. A certain Edition of The Merchant of Venice, (From
the Athenceum) 215
XIX. ** With good capon lined." (From the Antiquary) . 219
XX. ** Caesar doth bear me hard." (From the Academy) . 224
XXI. Mr. Fumess* New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare :
Hamlet, (From the Athenaum and the Academy) 2,2.%
— XXII. Hamlet's Age. (From the Academy) . . . 237
**An aery of children, little eyases.*' (From the
Athenceum) 237
"That cry out on top of question." (From the
Athenaum) . . . • 239
** Assume a virtue, if you have it not." (From the
Academy) . '. . '. . . , . 240
"• XXIII. King Lear, (From the Fortnightly Remew) . . 242
XXIV. Cordell Anslye. (From the Athenaum) , . .271
^— XXV. The Porter in Macbeth. (From the New Shak-
spere Society's Transactions) .... 273
•* XXVI. Macbeth a good Churchman. (From the Academy) . 291
XXVII. "The Coal of Fire upon the Ice." (From the
Academy) 292
XXVIII. "The Washing of Ten Tides." {From the Academy) 294
I.
FROM STRATFORD TO LONDON.
(From the Comhill Magazine^ Jan., 1877.)
SEEING our dearth of information about Shakespeare is
so great, nothing that may be of the slightest value
ought to be neglected ; and so it may be worth while to con-
sider what scenes and sights may have been familiar to him
in his joumeyings to and fro from Stratford to London.
The transit can be accomplished now in four or five hours ;
but it was no such light matter in the Elizabethan age.
The distance is some 100 miles (by Oxford 94), and probably
under ordinary circumstances would occupy four or five days
to traverse, though no doubt, under pressure, a less time
might suffice. These periods would certainly form notable
epochs in the poet's life. What a change from **the smoke
and uproar and riches of Rome " I No doubt he would
seldom travel alone. Perils from robbers were too common
and too serious to encourage that practice. But yet he
would often be lonely enough ; and many a thought after-
wards embodied in immortal shape must have occurred to
him during these long hours. It would make a fine picture
— the author of HamleL his "season" over, amidst the
2 ' ESSA YS AND NOTES.
woody solitudes of the Chilterns, or slowly wending his way
through some lowland marsh. We may be sure he was not
idle at these times. The rough rude simple life he saw
around him would not be unsuggestive. There is a tradition,
as we shall see, that he " studied " his Dogberry in some
village he passed through. His tablets must often have
been called into requisition. And when the days were fair,
and all the landscape wore the beauty of the sunshine, many
a " session of sweet silent thought " must have been holden.
We cannot doubt that in those long quiet journeys his spirit
found for itself nurture and strength. The true poet is like
that "bright flower, whose home is everywhere." Often
travel-tired, he would find rest for himself in contemplating
the face of nature and the humours of men. Indeed, with
all their discomforts and annoyances, these may have been
precious times for him; and he may have arrived at his
destination a wiser, if a weary, man.
There are two or three sonnets in which he speaks of
journeys, possibly of these journeys. The following may
have been written at Stratford, at the close of one of them : —
" Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired ;
But then begins a journey in my head,
To work my mind when body's work's expired ;
For then my thoughts (from far where I abide)
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see ;
Save that my soul's imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view.
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.
So thus by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee and for myself no quiet find. "
In others we see him in the midst of a journey, weighed
FROM STRATFORD 70 LONDON. 3
down with that strange sorrow whose history seems likely to
remain inscrutable : —
** How heavy do I journey on the way,
When what I seek — my weary travel's end —
Doth teach that ease and that repose to say,
* Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend I '
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe.
Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me.
As if by some instinct the wretch did know
His rider loved not speed, being made from thee.
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on
That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide.
Which heavily he answers with a groan
More sharp to me than spurring to his side ;
For that same groan doth put this in my mind.
My grief lies onward, and my joy behind."
There are others in which he speaks of absences from his
friend. Of course Shakespeare made other journeys, besides
between Stratford and London ; occasionally he " strolled "
with his company ; but in any case these sonnets may be of
assistance in picturing him to us as he passed along the
roads that we propose to specify. We can see that it was
not without knowledge he made Autolycus sing : —
** A merry heart goes all the day ;
Your sad tires in a mile-a."
II.
We need scarcely remind our readers that facilities of
locomotion in the Elizabethan age were scanty enough.
They are probably well aware how scanty such facilities
were a century later, and even a century later still. It was
much worse in the Elizabethan age. Public coaches did not
begin to run, or to stick fast, till nearly half a century after
4 ^ ESS A YS AND NOTES.
Shakespeare's time. The art of road-making was not yet
known ; Metcalfe and Telford, and their worthy biographer
Mr. Smiles, belonged to a far distant posterity. What they
were pleased to call roads then were mere deeply-rutted
tracks, almost or altogether impassable in bad weather;
wide-spreading sloughs with no Mr. Hope at the further edge
to lend the splashed and mired traveller a hand. The
country was still generally unenclosed ; and all that could
be done when the ruts became too deep for endurance was
to essay a fresh track by the side of the old one. Some
statutes indeed had been passed in the reign of Henry the
Eighth, designed to improve certain thoroughfares of noto-
rious badness, and an Act of a more general application had
been passed in the reign of Queen Mary; but little or nothing
had come of them. The description given in the preamble
of the statute of 1555 remained still true : " Highways are
now both very noisome and tedious to travel in, and dangerous
to all passengers and carriages." We have not yet learnt to
control our rivers, and it is still possible sometimes to see
wide lakes extending over the land : but this was a common
Elizabethan spectacle. Often then, and many a time after^
locomotion was completely intercepted by floods. Not so
very seldom might it be said that the " contagious fogs "
((
Falling in the land,
Have every pelting river made so proud
That they have overborne their continents :
The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green com
Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard ;
The fold stands empty in the drowned field.
And crows are fatted with the murrion flock ;
The nine men's morris is filled up with mud,
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green
For lack of tread are undistinguishable."
FROM STRATFORD TO LONDON, 5
At such times one's journey could only be pursued by the
help of skilful guides, and even so at some risk. To take a
late illustration, Thoresby, who died in 17 15, tells us in his
diary how the rains had " raised the washes upon the road
near Ware to that height that passengers from London that
were upon that road swam, and a poor higgler was drowned,
which prevented me travelling for many hours ; yet towards
evening we adventured with some country people who con-
ducted us over the meadows, whereby we missed the deepest
of the wash at Cheshunt, though we rode to the saddle-skirts
for a considerable way, but got safe to Walthara Cross,
where we lodged.'* ^
Such being the roads — so " founderous," as someone calls
them — ^what would the vehicles be ?
Carriers' carts * of a sort did struggle along ; but for the
most part movement was accomplished on foot or on horse-
back, and conveyance of goods by pack-horses. Horse-
litters were occasionally used. Coaches are said to have
been introduced by Boomen, Queen Elizabeth's own coach-
man ; but they were little better, as Mr. Smiles remarks, than
carts without springs, the body resting solid upon the axles.
And those who used them paid a bitter penalty for the
luxury.' At one of the first audiences which the Queen
* See Smiles' Lives of the Engineers: Metcalfe and Telford, p. 19,
ed. 1874.
^ F)mes Morison speaks (temp. James I.) of "carriers who have long
covered wagons, in which they carry passengers from place to place ;
but this kind of journeying," he adds, ** is so tedious, by reason they
must take wagon very early and come very late to their inns, that none
but women and people of inferior condition travel in this sort."
' See a picture of this invention in Mr. Roberts's Social History of
the Southern Counties, Perhaps those who have known what it is to be
hauled in a bathing-machine across a fine shingly beach can best appre-
ciate the delights of such a means of locomotion.
6 ESS A YS AND NOTES.
gave to the French Ambassador, in 1568, she feelingly
described to him " the aching pains she was suffering in con-
sequence of having been knocked about in a coach which had
been driven a little too fast, only a few days before." About
a century later, the public vehicles were popularly known
as " hell-carts," and no doubt well deserved the name. One
grave objection to wheels was, it seems, that they broke up
the roads ! " King James," says Mr. Roberts, " proclaimed
that carts and wagons with four wheels, canying excessive
burthens, so galled the highways and the very foundations
of bridges, that the king denounced them to the judges as
common nuisances, against the weal public, and the use of
them an offence. By this proclamation of James I., in the
year 1622, no carrier was to travel with a four-wheeled
wagon, but only with a cart having two wheels, and only to
carry 20 cwt. Anyone transgressing this was to be punished."
At Weymouth, in 1635, "the authorities passed a bye-law,
that no brewers were to bind the wheels of their carts with
iron, as it wore away the pitching of the streets. Precisely
similar was the complaint against hackney-coaches, 1638—
viz. 'that they broke up the streets. ... It having been
thought proper to ordain in the year 1662, that the wheels
of each cart or wagon should be four inches in the tyre,
this was found to be impracticable, for in some parts the
ruts could not receive such wheels, nor could the carriages
pass. A proclamation stayed the prosecution of offenders
till the further order of Parliament." In the Elizabethan age
the fact was that the roads could not bear the coaches, and
the coaches could not bear the roads ; so there was but little
traffic in that way, that fearful institution the stage-coach
being a later birth of time.
On foot then, or on horseback, Shakespeare would perform
his journeys. That he would ride when he could afford it
FROM STRATFORD TO LONDON. 7
is the more probable from the fact we gather from certain
sonnets that he was lame, for we see no reason to take the
words in any non-natural or heterobiographical sense. There
is ground for believing that this defect was of no very serious
nature ; it has been compared with that of Scott, and that of
Byron ; but it would probably make him prefer riding to
walking. And we might just ask in passing whether pedes-
trianizing is not a quite modern English taste ? A German,
who made a walking tour in this country not a hundred
years ago, found such a method of progress not at all prac-
tised, and indeed one which exposed him to much suspicion
and discomfort. He unbosomed his wonder that it should
be so to a coach-fellow-traveller, for he did sometimes
indulge himself in a lift. ** On my asking him why English-
men, who were so remarkable for acting up to their own
notions and ideas, did not, now and then, merely to see life
in every point of view, travel on foot ; * Oh ! ' said he, * we
are too rich, too lazy, and too proud. ' " But, if a quite
modem taste, it was, no doubt, an old necessity for many a
traveller. See Walton's account of Hooker's walking from
Oxford to Exeter.
Horses could be hired at 1 2d, the first day, and 2>d, a day
after till re-delivery. " Mr. John Garland, merchant, mayor
of Lyme in 1569, rode to London on town business. His
whole charge for himself and horse in London was 3/. 5 j. ;
the hire of the horse was 5X." Also, it was possible to post,
at least in some parts. It was so in Norfolk as early as 1568,
as we learn from Blomefield apud Roberts. The charge was
^d, a mile for the horse, and 6^. for the guide " to go and
carry back the horse ; and the said horses were not to carry
any cloak-bag of above ten pounds' weight." A common
arrangement for those who did not keep a horse of their own
was to buy one at the beginning of a journey and sell it at
8 ESSA YS AND NOTES,
the end. So late as 1753 a Dr. Skene, of Aberdeen, travelled
from London to Edinburgh in this way. He bought a mare
for eight guineas in London, rode her nineteen days, and
sold her in Edinburgh for what he had given for her.
We have an incidental picture of the travelling equestrian
of the seventeenth century, in a book quoted by Mr. Smiles,
called The Grand Concern of England explained in several
Proposals to Parliament^ published in 1673, denouncing
stage-coaches and caravans. The writer, said to be one
John Gressot, of the Charterhouse, insists that stage-coaches
were ruinous to trade, " for that most gentlemen, before they
travelled in coaches, used to ride with swords, belts, pistols,
holsters, portmanteaus, and hat-cases [a heavy cargo this ! ],
which in these coaches they have little or no occasion for j
for, when they rode on horseback, they rode in one suit and
carried another to wear when they came to their journey's
end, or lay by the way ; but in coaches a silk suit and an
Indian gown, with a sash, silk stockings, and beaver hats,
men ride in and carry no other with them, because they
escape the wet and dirt, which on horseback they cannot
avoid \ whereas in two or three journeys on horseback their
clothes and hats were wont to be spoiled ; which done, they
were forced to have new very often, and that increased the
consumption of the manufactures and the employment of the
manufacturer, which travelling in coaches doth in no way
do."
Certainly it was not all plain sailing for the equestrian. It
was often as much as he could do, nay more, to get along.
Here is a fourteenth century instance : Archbishop Islip,
riding from Oxford Palace to Mayfield, Sussex, in 1362, fell
from his horse in a wet and miry lane between Sevenpaks
and Tunbridge, so that he was wet through all over. In that
pitiable state he rode on without any change of clothes, and
FROM STRATFORD TO LONDON. 9
was seized with paralysis. Think of his poor Grace, the
Primate of All England, utterly dank and bemudded ! And
things were scarcely a whit better three centuries after.
" Eight hundred horse were taken prisoners in the civil wars
in Lincolnshire while sticking in the mire."
Add to all the perils from ruts and sloughs and floods
those from highwaymen. The waters were only sometimes
out; the robbers always were, professionals or amateurs.
The woods that then abounded afforded these gentlemen an
excellent cover, which they turned to good account. So
early as 1 285 some attempt was made to circumscribe this
accommodation. It was enacted, says Mr. Smiles, " that all
bushes and trees along the roads leading from one market to
another should be cut down for two hundred feet on either
side, to prevent robbers lurking therein." On the Bucking-
hamshire proverb, " Here if you beat a bush it's odds you'ld
start a thief," Fuller, in his Worthies^ observes, " No doubt
there was just occasion for this proverb at the original
thereof, which then contained satirical truth, proportioned
to the place before it was reformed ; whereof thus our great
antiquary : * It was altogether unpassable in times past by
reason of trees, until that Leofstane, Abbot of St. Alban's,
did cut them down, because they yielded a place of refuge
for thieves.' But this proverb is now antiquated as to the
truth thereof, Buckinghamshire affording as many maiden
assizes as any locality of equal populousness. Yea, hear
how she pleadeth for herself that such highwaymen were
never her natives, but fled thither for their shelter out of
neighbouring counties." We may quite admit the truth of
Fuller's latter remark, without believing that highway robbery
was at all rare in the county of which he speaks. Certainly
in the olden times the Chiltern Hills were notorious for the
bandits that haunted them. "We passed through many
lo ESSA YS AND NOTES.
woods," writes Brunetto Latini, Dante's tutor, of his journey
from London to Oxford, "considered here as dangerous
places, as they are infested with robbers, which indeed is
the case with most of the roads in England. This is a
circumstance connived at by the neighbouring barons on
consideration of sharing in their booty and of these robbers
serving as their protectors on all occasions, personally and
with the whole strength of their band. However, as our
company was numerous, we had less fear." It was to esta-
blish order, or do what he could in that line in this thieves'
lair, that the Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds was origi-
nally appointed. But in all parts of the country a meeting
with those who
** With a base and boisterous sword enforced
A thievish living on the common road "
was a very common travelling experience. And so it was
common to go armed; as appears from the extract given
above, from The Grand Concern ^ &c., and could be shown
still more fully, if our space permitted, from Harrison's
Description of England, See the New Shakspere Society's
edition, edited by Mr. Furnivall, Part I., p. 283.
III.
Having said just as much on the ways and means of Eliza-
bethan travelling as may help us to form a picture of our
poet en route, let us now name specially the roads which he
in all probability followed in passing between his home at
Stratford and " his place of business " in London.
There are two main routes between Stratford and London :
one by Oxford and High Wycombe, the other by Banbury
and Aylesbury. And there are traditions which indicate
FROM STRATFORD TO LONDON, ii
that Shakespeare used them both. At least that he used the
former one may be regarded as fairly certain. For the latter
one it is to be said that certainly at a later time it became
the recognized route from London, and that one tradition
seems to connect him with it.
There would seem good reason for believing that in the
Elizabethan age, and later still, that the common route was
by Oxford. Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, to whose researches we
all owe so much, prints in his Life of Shakespeare the follow-
ing account of some Stratford people who went to London
on the business of the Corporation in 1592.
Charges laid out when we went to Court :
Paid for our horsemeat the first night at Oxford .
And for our own charges the same night .
The second night at Islip for our supper
And for our horsemeat the same night at Islip .
The third day for our bait and our horses at Hook
Norton . .
And for walking our horses at Tetsworth and elsewhere
Sum for this journey . . . xlr. \d.
We are told by Anthony Wood that Shakespeare in his
journeys between AVarwickshire and London frequented
" the house of John Davenant, a sufficient vintner." It was,
and is, a tavern known as the " Crown," in the Corn Market,
not far from Carfax Church. And so Aubrey : " Mr. William
Shakespeare was wont to go into Warwickshire once a year,
and did commonly in this journey lie at this [Davenant's]
house in Oxon, where he was exceedingly respected." And
so Oldys, on the authority of Pope, who quoted Betterton :
" If tradition may be trusted, Shakespeare often baited at the
Crown Inn, a tavern in Oxford, in his journey to and from
London." Davenant, the poet, son of the publican, is said
to have been Shakespeare's godson, and to have boasted, or
at least suggested, that he stood in a yet closer relation to him.
• •
lU.
viiiflf.
\\s.
ii^.
• •
ILf.
• • • • «
wwd.
• •
\\5,
viii^.
xii^.
iii^.
12 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
The tradition that connects Shakespeare with the other
route mentioned, or rather with a variety of it, is given only
by Aubrey : —
" The humour of the constable in Midsummer JVighfs
Dream [he means Much Ado about Nothing] he happened
to take at Grendon, in Bucks, which is the road from
London to Stratford; and there was living that constable
about 1642, when I first came to Oxon. I think it was
Midsummer night that he happened to lie there. Mr. Jos.
Howe is of that parish, and knew him. Ben Jonson and he
did gather humours of men daily wherever they came. . . .
He was wont to go to his native country once a year."
The Variorum version gives Crendon (see iii. 213, ed.
1 8 13), and there is a place called Long Crendon in Bucks,
not far from Thame ; but we follow the reading of Mr.
Halliwell-Phillipps as more probably sound. ^ Grendon, or
to give it its full style, Grendon Underwood, lies just to the
north of the road — the old Akeman Street — from Aylesbury
to Bicester, about six miles from the latter town ; and so
travelling by the Banbury and Aylesbury route, mentioned
above, Shakspeare might easily make the worthy constable's
acquaintance. At a later time the coaches, it would seem,
did not go by Bicester, but by Buckingham, as may be
learned from Owen's Britannia Depicta^ or Ogiiby Improved,
1749. No doubt the equestrian traveller would perpetually
vary his route, for the sake of companionship, or some
special flood or other danger, or for mere variety's sake.
That Shakespeare then did not always go vid Oxford is
^ That Grendon is right is proved — if any proving is wanted — by the
fact, known from other sources, that Mr. Jos. Howe was of Grendon,
not Crendon. He was born at Grendon Underwood, Bucks, March
29, 16 1 2, and died August 28, 1701, setat. ninety. See Bishop Pear*
son's Vind, Ignat,; Yi^dsn^^s Robert of Gloucester y ed. 18 10.
FROM STRATFORD TO LONDON, 13
probable enough, and has a tradition in its favour; but we
seem justified in believing that vid Oxford was certainly his
ordinary route ; and so to it we will now give attention.
IV.
For the sake of convenience, we will divide the journey
into four stages, two between Stratford and Oxford, two
between Oxford and London.
(i) From Stratford to Chipping Norton^ 20 miles. A most
pleasant expedition, now-a-days, over a finely undulating
country, up the valley of the Stour, by the side, for some
miles at least, of noble parks, which in Shakespeare's time,
perhaps, were not enclosed. Probably no English county
surpasses Warwickshire in quiet loveliness. Nature does
not reveal herself there in her more terrible forms, but in a
sweet, tranquil beauty, balm-like to the spirit, and deliciously
restful. Scott calls " Caledonia stem and wild " — Caledonia,
with its brown heaths and shaggy woods, with its mountains
and floods — "meet nurse of the poetic child." But the
greatest of all poetic children was nursed amid far other
scenes — not amidst excitement and grandeur, but amidst
calm and peace. The Avon, no doubt, could and did
rise at times, and sweep the labours of men and oxen
before its swollen current ; but for the most part it flowed
on, not chafing and mutinying against its restraints, but
content and gentle ; and Gray, with his fine tact, touches
the right chord when he speaks of "lucid Avon" stray-
ing. It was amidst sweet silences, which Avon's murmur
and Arden's whisperings scarcely broke, that Shakespeare
was cradled and nurtured, — that the mighty mother did
unveil her awful face to her " darling." So too it was with
14 £SSA YS AND NOTES.
the Jewish prophet. "A great and strong wind rent the
mountains and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord ;
but the Lord was not in the wind ; and after the wind an
earthquake ; but the Lord was not in the earthquake ; and
after the earthquake a fire ; but the Lord was not in the
fire. And after the fire " — after all those tumults and terrors
— " a still small voice."
" One said no less truly than merrily," writes Fuller of
Warwickshire : " * It is the heart, but not the core of Eng-
land,' having nothing coarse or choaky therein. The
wooded part thereof may want what the fieldon affords ; so
that Warwickshire is defective in neither. As for the plea-
sure thereof, an author [Speed] is bold to say, that from
Edgehill one may behold it anpther Eden, as Lot did the
Plain of Jordan ; but he might have put in : * It is not
altogether so well watered.' "
Shakespeare would leave Stratford by the Clopton Bridge,
and then presently turn his face due southward. Soon the road
rises. When it falls slightly again, amidst noble trees, he
would lose sight of Trinity spire, and feel that his native
town was really left behind. At Alderminster, if the day
was bright, he might linger a few minutes by the church, so
picturesque and picturesquely situated. And then on, be-
neath trees that, some of them at least, still lend a grateful
shadow, by Newbold to Tredington, little dreaming as he
passed by the point where a road strikes off to Lower Eat-
ington, that there some day on a cross would be inscribed
doggrel mentioning him : —
** 6 miles to Shakspere's Town whose name
Is known throughout the earth
To Shipton 4, whose lesser fame
Boasts no such poet's birth."
What comfort even this feeble quatrain might have minis-
FROM STRATFORD TO LONDON, ' 15
tered to him, could he have seen it that first journey, when
he was setting forth to try his fortune in strange fields;
when, whatever the confidence with which his genius in-
spired him, his course was yet dim and uncertain ; and who
knew whether "when the surly sullen bell," which gave
warning to the world that he was fled from it, had ceased
tolling, any one would care his "poor name" to rehearse?
Just where that cross now stands, he may one day have
stood, faint and weary, hesitating, despondent. It is, how-
ever, quite as probable that when he reached the bifurca-
tion he was in the highest possible spirits, and punned
viUanously on the name of the neighbouring hamlets.
He might turn a quarter of a mile or so from the high
road to look at the fine church at Tredington, with its Nor-
man doorway and its monuments; and, perhaps, gossiping with
some native — "he was a handsome, well-shaped man,"
quoth Aubrey, " very good company, and of a very ready
and pleasant smooth wit" — would hear, and would him-
self crack some joke about the ever hard-up rector. " I
have heard Mr. Trap say," so writes the Rev. John Ward,
sometime (1662-1679) vicar of Stratford, "that the parsons
of Tredington were always needy. One Dr. Brett, who was
parson before Dr. Smith, was to marry one Mr. Hicks ; and
Mr. Hicks, in a vapour, laid a handful of gold and silver
upon the book ; and he took it all. [Why should not he ?
What was it put on the book for ?] Whereupon Mr. Hicks
went to him, and told him of it that he did not intend to
have given him all : it was about ten pound. Says he, * I
want, and I will pay thee again ; ' but never did."
The first place worthy of the name of town he would
arrive at would be Shipston-on-Stour, situated on a some-
what bleak upland. A quiet place in these days, but once,
as is shown by the inns which still abound, lively enough
16 ESSA YS AND NOTES,
with coaches and traffic. They gape in vain now, the yard
gates, except haply on market-days and at the mop-fair ; and
the horns that once made the old streets ring are blown, if
blown at all, on the banks of the Styx, no longer of the
Stour. " In this bleak ill-cultivated track," ^ writes one who
traversed it not quite a century since, " the lower class of
labouring poor, who have very little other employment in
winter than thrashing out corn, are much distressed for the
want of fuel, and think it economy to lie much in bed, to
save both firing and provisions."
Now on to Long Compton. "The intervening country
is open, exposed, and not very rich," says the writer just
quoted, and his description may serve for the earlier time.
" It is deficient in planting, which in course of time would
generate warmth to the atmosphere, and convert the various
influences of the heavens into a nutritive vegetable mould
that would eventually enrich it." The water-shed of the
Stour is now reached. Long Compton * lies straggling in a
way that justifies its adjective across a valley, from either
edge of which are obtainable fine views, those to the north
from above Weston House especially so. Crossing the
Combe, which gives the village its name, even the most un-
interested and uninteresting tourist would, we should suppose,
turn a few steps aside to see the antiquarian glory of Oxford-
shire, for we are now in Oxfordshire — the RoUrich-stones.'
They probably show less well now than in Shakespeare's day,
for Time and the farmers have been busy. We may certainly
^ See Tour in England atid Scotland in 1785. By Thomas Newton,
Esq.
^ At Barton-on-the -Heath, some two miles from Long Compton,
lived Robert Dover, of Cotswold games celebrity. {Merry Wives, I.
i. 92.) See Britton's Beauties of England and Wales: Warwickshire,
® See Drayton's Polyolbion, the 13th Song, and Selden's note.
jt'ROM STRATFORD TO LONDON. 17
imagine him lingering in that mysterious circle, wondering
what faith or what sorrow or what triumph it was that had
once arranged it, hearing perchance from some old shep-
herd the stories of the Whispering Knights and of the dis-
appointed King. Here indeed were " sermons in stones."
The original language was dark and hidden; yet, for all
that, they were rich in significance, in suggestion, in pathos.
An old MS., quoted by Hearne in his edition of Robert of
Gloucester's Chronicle, describing the Mirabilm BriiannuBy
ends thus : " Sunt magni lapides in Oxenfordensi pago,
manu hominum quasi sub quadam connexione dispositi, set
a quo tempore vel a qua gente vel ad quid memorandum vel
signandum factum fuerit, ignoratur. Ab incolis autem voca
tur locus ille Rolendrych."
Dropping across another valley, we presently reach
Chipping Norton, for no longer can one put up at Chapel
House at Cold Norton, a well-known hostelry once — "a
most excellent inn, and fitted up in the first style of accommo-
dation," says a last century traveller. " The Chapel " origi-
nally belonged, as we learn from Murray, to an Augustinian
priory, founded temp, Henry II. When Shakespeare passed
by, this priory had been suppressed only some fifty years;
and, probably enough, ruins were yet standing, and the
Chapel looked not altogether unlike itself At Chipping
Norton he would find accommodation in abundance ; for it
must have been then, as it had been long before (so its
name shows) an important market town, and as it was long
afterwards, an important station for travellers. When, in
1749, a coach was started to run from Birmingham to Lon-
don, vid Oxford, " It breakfasts," writes Lady Luxborough
to Shenstone, whom she wishes to avail himself of it, " at
Henley [in Arden], and lies at Chipping Norton." The
town consists mainly of one long street, which it would seem
c
i8 ESSA VS AXD NOTES.
consisted mainly of inns. The church, not much changed
probably since the sixteenth century, with its picturesque
site, its double north aisle, its hexagonal south porch, and
its old monuments, is well worth a visit.
(ii) From Chipping Norton to Oxford, 20 miles. — Regain-
ing the high road, Shakespeare would, as far as Woodstock,
follow the course of the Glyme, which flows into the Even-
lode, which flows into the Isis. The first village encoun-
tered is Neat Enstone, half a mile south of Enstone. He
might turn aside to see Enstone church, and smile over
the legend of the murdered Kenelm, son of Kenulphus, to
whom it is dedicated, having, perhaps, Latin enough to
interpret the old leonines — always provided he came across
them : —
" In Clene sub spina jacet in convalle bovina
Vertice privatus, Kenelmus fraude necatus."
At least let us think of him visiting the Hoarstone, as it is
called, the Giant's (A.S. Ent=2i giant) stone, that is said to
give the village its name, for it would lie but a few yards out
of his way. We say " it," but in fact there are four other
stones, the Hoarstone alone surviving upright They formed
once, it may be believed, a rude tomb with four cumbrous
sides and a cumbrous roof, with earth heaped all round
them or over them. How long might a giant lie i' the earth ere
he rot ? He must, surely, have an extra allowance of years.
Passing now on through the hamlet of Over Kiddington,
with its ruined cross — at Nether Kiddington, a mile on the
left, is a church said to be worth seeing, but we cannot see
everything — by Ditchley Park,^ home of the Lees, who were
^ * * Hence [from Corabury] we went to see the famous wells, natural
and artificial grotts and fountains, called BusheU's Wells, at Enstone.
This Bushell had been secretary to my Lord Verulam. It is an extra-
ordinary solitude. There he had two mummies ; a grott where he lay
FROM STRATFORD TO LONDON. 19
destined to be celebrated hereafter by a brother-genius ; then,
after perhaps a slight detour, to Glympton, and passing on
the right the road to Combury Hall (only five miles off),
where Leicester, Elizabeth's Leicester, perished by the poison
prepared, it is said, for his wife ; keeping by the old wall of
Woodstock Park — it is said to have been the first park en-
closed with a wall — our poet would arrive at Woodstock
town. For him, obvious associations here would be the
Fair Rosamond and the poet Chaucer. The story of the
former has been shown to be much mixed with fable;
the connection of the latter with Woodstock need not be
doubted, for, after all, we may disbelieve that Thomas
Chaucer was the son of the poet without disbelieving that
the poet, who was connected with the court and with princes
of the blood, visited a palace so famous in his time and so
much frequented. Shakespeare would enjoy the Chaucer
memory, at least, with no allaying scepticism ; and as he
strolled through that glorious park, might have a vision of
Theseus, to be portrayed perhaps by himself some day, " to
the laund riding him full right," or of Palamon and Arcite
madly fighting — fighting
"breem, as it were boares two."
in a hammock like an Indian. Hence we went to Dichley, an ancient
seat of the Lees, now Sir Hen. Lee's ; it is a low, ancient timber-house,
with a pretty bowling-green. My lady gave us an extraordinary dinner.
This gentleman's mother was Countess of Rochester, who was also
there, and Sir Walter Saint John. There were some pictures of their
ancestors not ill-painted ; the great-grandfather had been Knight of the
Garter ; there was the picture of a Pope, and our Saviour's head. So
we returned to Combury." — Evelyn's Diary, Oct. izo, 1664. This Sir
Henry Lee would be, so far as date goes — Bevis belonged to the grand-
£Bither — Scott's hero. It would have pleased the author of Woodstock
to know, that the Will whom his hero is for ever quoting, must often
have passed close by Ditchley Park, and might have patted the head,
or pinched the ear, of his admirer when a boy.
20 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
Or, perhaps, in a realistic vein, he drew a grotesque picture to
himself of the royal lover losing the thread and finding himself
involved in his own labyrinth, with his Rosamond close by,
yet inaccessible, so near and yet so far, while the queen sat
fuming and frowning outside, unable to discover the aperture
through which her truant spouse had disappeared.
Woodstock would have also associations with his own time.
The palace had been one of the places of the queen's con-
finement during her sister's reign. It was here she heard the
milkmaid singing, and envied her happy lot. The verses
she is said to have written upon that occasion may have been
still decipherable in Shakespeare's time, and he may have
perused them on their extraordinary tablet : —
** O Fortune, how thy restless, wavering state
Hath fraught with cares my troubled wit !
Witness this present prison whither fate
Could bear me, and the joys I quit.
Thou caused'st the guilty to be losed
From bands wherein are innocents enclosed ;
Causing me guiltless to be straight reserved.
And freeing those that death hath well deserved.
But by her envy can be nothing wrought ;
So God send to my foes all they have thought."
A.D. 1555. Elizabeth, Prisoner.
And so, by Begbrooke and Wolvercote, with a drink, per-
haps, at Aristotle's well, into Oxford by St. Giles's Street, to
the Crown, or, perhaps, on his first visit, to some humbler
shelter.
What a revelation of delight and beauty to the youth from
Stratford ! It would form an epoch in his life, this first
passing under the spell of Oxford. It was Uke entering the
Presence. The colleges, already venerable, seemed the very
homes of learning and thought. His shrewd observation
would, indeed, presently suggest to him that folly and igno-
FROM STRA TFORD TO LONDON. 2 1
ranee had here and there intruded themselves, and that
often the Muses must be blushing for those called their sons ;
but so broad and wise a critic would never make the blunder
of forgetting in certain abuses the magnificent uses and the
magnificent fruits of the great school within whose precincts
his heart beat with a new rapture. It was a temple dedi-
cated to Wisdom, and we may believe he bowed his head in
it with a sincere worship. To say nothing else, the mere
outward beauty of the place, its halls and quadrangles and
groves, its antiquity, which showed as " a lusty winter, frosty
but kindly," its stately towers, the majestic river on whose
waters its fair face was mirrored — the mere outward beauty
of the place would gladden his inmost soul.
(iii) From Oxford to High Wycombe^ 25 miles. — ^The
common route from Oxford to London was by Tetsworth,
High Wycombe, and Beaconsfield. It was by this route
that Brunetto Latini, from whom we have already quoted, pro-
ceeded in the thirteenth century. Harrison, in the Elizabethan
age, in his chapter on Thoroughfares, mentions it. This is
his list of the intermediate places : " Whatleie, Thetisford,
Stocking-church, East Wickham, Becconsfield, Uxbridge."
The Stratford citizens went this way on the occasion referred
to above. So Evelyn, in 1664, going "with my lord visct.
Cornbury to Cornbury in Oxfordshire, to assist him in the
planting of the park and bear him company, with Mr. Belin
and Mr. May, in a coach with six horses ; dined at Uxbridge,
lay at Wickam." Returning from Oxford, " we came back by
Beaconsfield ; next day to London, where we dined at the
lord Chancellor's with my lord Bellasis." And endless
other instances might be given. But the route by Henley
is scarcely four miles longer, and no doubt was often taken.
Shakespeare would pass down " the High," and beneath
Magdalen Tower, across Magdalen Bridge, and then turn to
22 £SSA VS AND NOTES.
the left. He might keep to the main road, go on up Hed-
dington Hill, and so pass near Forest Hill, where the Powells
lived, with whom Milton was to be one day connected, per-
haps exchanging a " good morrow " with the future father of
Mary ; or, more probably, he would take the nearer road
which runs just north of Horspath, and so to Wheatley.
Then crossing the Thame, on to Tetsworth, where he might
pause to look at the rude sculptures over the south doorway
of the church. Then mounting the hill in front of him, he
would find the Chilterns now close at hand, stretching from
north to south before him like a wall, here richly beech-
wooded, there bare down. Near Aston Rowant, which lies
a little to the north of the road, there were objects of interest
on either hand that might well have attracted him, did his
leisure serve. Some two miles to the south there was Shirbume
Castle, looking much as we see it now, much as the men of
the fourteenth century had seen it, with its towers and
moat and drawbridges, as perfect a representation of the
Middle Ages as exists, we suppose, at least exteriorly ; the
interior is modernized. It was here, but not in the present
building, which dates from 1377 according to Murray, that
Brunetto Latini passed a night. Some eight miles to the
north from Aston Rowant, he would find localized traditions
of a king on whom he was himself to confer immortal dis-
tinction; for the Kimbles — Great Kimble, Little Kimble,
and Kimblewick — near Princes Risborough, are said to have
derived their name from Cymbeline, or Kimbelinus aj^^ti
Geoffrey of Monmouth, Kimbel apud Robert of Gloucester.
A yet older form of his name — the form found on certain
coins — is found close by in Cunobelin^s Camp. The mound
by Great Kimble church, the Whiteleaf Cross on Green
Holly Hill, and the earthwork just mentioned, all give to the
neighbourhood a strange traditional interest. And it has
other charms. The view to the west, from near Cunobelin's
FROM STRATFORD TO LONDON. 23
Camp, is of unusual extent and beauty ; and it is good to be
there for a summer's evening. .
" He looked and saw wide territory spread
Before him, towns and rural works between."
Let us now go on our way from Aston Rowant to the
Chilterns, by Stokenchurch Hill to Stokenchurch. Thick
wood still covers the sides of the Chilterns here ; the thieves
that once swarmed in them are no more, or rather have
transferred themselves to some other beat, for we cannot
flatter ourselves or them that they have grown honest. They
only do not rob here because there is no one to rob, and
because that way of doing the business is something out of
date. Stokenchurch has now a deserted look ; it seems
created for coaches to drive through, and at the present
time they are like angels' visits. On now across the
Common into Buckinghamshire, to West Wycombe, not in
Shakespeare's time deformed by a church so unsightly and in
such vile taste, with its " hypgethral mausoleum," which looks
rather like an overgrown pound. And so to High or Chip-
ping Wycombe, called also by Harrison", as we have seen,
East Wycombe, whose most interesting feature is its large
and handsome church, with its fine Perpendicular tower.
(iv) From High Wycombe to London^ 29 miles. — The road
runs alongsideof the Wick till, when a mile beyond Loudwater,
that streamlet turns south towards the Thames ; and then
makes for Beaconsfield, to be made famous in after days by
the residence of Waller (at Hall Barns) and Burke (at
Gregory's, or Butler's Court, as he named it). The church
lies close by the wayside, and might well attract the travel-
ler's notice. And now on by a gentle descent, passing on
the right of Bulstrode Park, with its old earthwork and
legend of Saxon daring, and then across the common by
Gerard's or Jarrett's Cross. And so crossing the Colne into
24 ESS A YS AND NOTES,
Middlesex, to Uxbridge, in whose main street still stand
many houses that, to judge from their appearance and style,
were there when Shakespeare passed through. The place
has long outshone its mother village. " Though," says a
writer^ in 1761, "it is entirely independent, and is governed
by two bailiffs, two constables, and four head-boroughs, it is
only a hamlet to Great Hillington " \sic\
The road would now, no doubt, begin to give evidence of
the proximity of the metropolis in an increasing number of
passengers. The attractive force of the great centre would
be more manifestly shown, and Shakespeare would see a
striking illustration of one of his own similes : —
*' As many arrows, loosed several ways,
Come to one mark ; as many ways meet in one town ;
As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea ;
As many lines close in the dial's centre ;
So may a thousand actions, once afoot.
End in one purpose, and be aU well borne
Without defeat."
From Hillingdon Hill, with Harrow on his left and
Windsor in the distance on his right, he would look down
on the champaign in which London lies. And then, now on
the very threshold of his Promised Land, across Hillingdon
Heath, and through Northcote, near Southall ; over Hanwell
Common, through Ealing dean to Acton, by Kensington
Gravel Pits, through Tyburn, all along what is now Oxford
Street as far as High Street, when, following the old line,
he would turn south by St. Giles'-in-the-Fields (then really
so), and along Broad Street, and so along Holbom, houses
now beginning to multiply around him, and so, at last, into
London.
^ London and its Environs , &c., 6 vols. Printed for R. and J.
Dodsley. 1761.
ROUND ABOUT STRA TFORD-ON-A VON IN 1605. 25
II.
ROUND ABOUT STRATFORD-ON-AVON
IN 1605.
(From Frazer^s Magazine ^ April, 1878.)
NOT many other distinctions belong to Stratford-on-
Avon besides its sovereign honour of being Shake-
speare's birthplace and home ; which, indeed, is distinction
enough and to spare. " I am sure, sir," said a worthy in-
habitant, who was showing us something or other supposed
to be of Shakespearian interest ; " I am sure, sir, we ought
to be very much obliged to Mr. Shakespeare for being bom
here, for I don't know what we should have done without
him." The trade of the place may be described as Shake-
speare ; and we believe it is not a bad business. The entire
town might not inaptly put up above it a gigantic signboard
inscribed with the single name of that supreme article of
commerce. No town in the Middle Ages ever turned its
saint to better account. Nowhere and never have relics
been more zealously sought after and treasured up. To
think what a single shoe of the hero would now fetch, if only
devouring time had spared one; or a doublet — who shall
calculate the present market price of a Shakespearian
doublet ?
The other notabilities of the place are few; not many
could be expected, its size and importance considered. It is
said to have produced three eminent ecclesiastics in the
fourteenth century, two brothers and a kinsman — ^John
Stratford, Archbishop of Canterbury; Robert, Bishop of
26 jEssa ys and notes.
Chichester ; and Ralph, Bishop of London. Southern, too,
the dramatist, has been stated to be a native, by Nuttall,
editor of Fuller's Worthies ; but Southern was bom in
Ireland, co. Dublin. Perhaps the most remarkable histori-
cal association that is commonly known, is Queen Henrietta's
temporary residence in the town, and at New Place, in the
house that had been Shakespeare's, in June and July, 1643.
We propose now to speak of another historical association
that may be claimed for Stratford. Strangely enough, it has
been little noticed, though an acquaintance with it cannot
fail to add interest to a visit there, especially when we re-
mark that it belongs to Shakespeare's own time. There is
nothing said of it in Wheler's History of Stratford; nor, it
need perhaps scarcely be said, in such minor compilations
as Black's Warwickshire^ 01 Wise's Shakespeare^ his Birth-
place and its Neighbourhood ; nor yet in such really well-in-
formed and valuable volumes as Knight's Biography and
Halliwell-Phillipps' Life of the poet, though we have no
doubt Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps knows what there is to be
known about it. Nor is there a word respecting it in the
poem that has for its subject the locality specially concerned
— ^Jordan's Welcombe Hills^ published just a century ago.
Perhaps the knowledge of such an interest might have im-
parted some vigour into at least one paragraph of that
nerveless production. What we mean, and propose now to
show, is that Stratford and its neighbourhood are very inti-
mately connected with Gunpowder Plot.
n.
Where Shakespeare was in 1605 it is impossible to say.
Possibly, he was the greater part of the year in London and
the rest at Stratford. ** He was wont to go to his native
ROUND ABOUT STRA TFORD-ON-A VON IN 1605. 27
country once a year," says Aubrey. More probably, perhaps,
he was the greater part of the year in Stratford and not in
London ; but he may have been " strolling " with his com-
pany, if the common opinion is not accepted that he gave
over acting early in King James's reign. He " frequented
the plays all his younger time," says Ward, in his Diary,
1662 ; "but in his elder days lived at Stratford, and supplied
the stage with two plays every year." Wherever he was,
there can be little question that he shared the general horror
the discovery of the Powder Treason, as Bacon calls it, ex-
cited throughout the land; and that his interest in that
hideous affair would be deepened by the fact that one of its
chief nurseries lay close by his own home, and another but a
few miles off.
The one close by his own home was Clopton House, about
a mile north of Stratford, lying at the foot of the western
slope of the Welcombe Hills. It belonged at this time to
the Baron Carew of Clopton (for so Sir George had been
created in the preceding May) in right of his wife Lady
Joyce, daughter of William Clopton; but it was let, or rather
sublet, to Ambrose Rookwood, one of the chief conspirators,
some weeks before the fatal November ; and there, during
those weeks, Rookwood resided, and from time to time re-
ceived in his house his partners in the intended crime.
Clopton House then was one of the headquarters of the treason.
Only a few miles off was Norbrook, of which we will speak
presently, and at no great distance were two other spots
concerned in the same infamy — Lapworth and Coughton.
All these four places are in the hundred of Barlichway, in
which Stratford is situated.
At Bushwood, near Lapworth, was born the chief concoctor
of the plot, the heart and soul of it, Robert Catesby. Other
estates were possessed by his family, notably at Ashby St.
28 ^^S-^^ ys AND NOTES.
Legers in Northamptonshire; but it was at Bushwood
(which, oddly enough — who wishes, may see an explanation
in Dugdale — was a part of the parish of old Stratford) that
his father, Sir William, had mostly resided, and here, in 1573,
was born he who was to achieve the notoriety of a Catiline.
He was the direct descendant of the Catesby whom Shake-
speare had represented in his play of Richard III, — the first
item of the old doggrel :
" The Cat, the Rat, and Lovell that Dog,
Rule all England under the Hog."
His mother was a daughter of Sir Robert Throckmorton of
Coughton, and so the sister of the Throckmorton on whom
the pains of persecution for religion's sake had pressed so
heavily. Thus, by race on both sides, as well as by place,
he was linked to Warwickshire. These links were further
strengthened by his marrying a daughter of Sir Thomas
Leigh of Stoneleigh. According to Lingard he was origi-
nally a Protestant ; and, as has been pointed out, his
marriage seems to countenance the statement, as the Leighs
were so. Whatever check on his tendencies towards the
old faith his matrimonial alliance may have imposed, was
presently removed by his wife's death ; and he threw himself
with all the ardour of a vehement, headstrong nature into
the Recusant cause. As we shall mention again presently,
he took part in the Earl of Essex's insurrection. He was
afterwards involved in all the treasonable projects of the
discontented Roman Catholics during the last two years of
Queen Elizabeth's reign; and it appears from a letter of
Camden's dated only nine days before the Queen's death,
that Catesby and several other gentlemen, " hunger-starved
for innovations," among whom were Sir Edward Baynham
and the two Wrights (all of them conspirators in the Gun-
ROUND ABOUT STRATFORD-ON-A VON IN 1605. 29
powder Treason), were at that time committed by the Lords
of the Council for some seditious movements. Such was
the restless, intriguing spirit to whom must be assigned the
chief authorship of the Powder Plot. " At his death," says
Stow, " he said that the plot and practice of this treason was
only his, and that all others were but his assistants, chosen
by himself to that purpose, and that the honour thereof only
belonged to himself." We must not forget that the wrongs he
saw daily inflicted around him on his co-religionists were sorely
oppressive, and such as might well goad him to a fierce indig-
nation. Shortsighted and diabolical as his scheme was, it is yet
credible that the motives that instigated it were not alto-
gether base. Certainly he seems to have kindled an admi-
ration and enthusiasm that no merely ignoble nature could
have kindled. There is a certain lustre about him, even in
the midst of his obstinate folly and horrible guilt. Some-
thing of what is Divine, however devilish the work his hands
are set about, is yet present in the man for whom and near
whom others are ready to die. His comrades seem to have
been drawn and attached to him by a singular fascination.
He might truly say with Edmund, when " the wheel had
come full circle," "yet Catesby was beloved." King he
was amongst them.
Also Lapworth-born was another of the conspirators, of
humbler rank — Thomas Bates, an old servant of Catesby's.
He was not one of the original sharers of the scheme ; but
as he had been employed about Vinegar House — the house
hired in the Palace Yard, Westminster — and so had inevitably
seen something of what was going on, it was thought well to
take him into full partnership.
Lapworth is some eleven miles from Stratford ; but we
have given it precedence of Norbrook because of its con-
nection with the leading conspirator. Norbrook is only
30 ESSAYS AND NOTES.
some five miles from Shakespeare's town. It lies a little off"
the Warwick road, to the left, very near Coplow Hill. It was
an old manor-house, wherein at the time that concerns us
resided John Grant with his brothers, who also were impli-
cated in the plot, though not to the same extent as John ;
for John was one of the thirteen chief traitors. " This man-
sion-house was conveniently placed for the purpose of the
conspirators, being in the centre of their proposed rendez-
vous and of the most populous part of Warwickshire, between
the towns of Warwick and Stratford-on- Avon. It was walled
and moated, and well calculated from its great extent for the
reception of horses and ammunition. At the present day,
little remains of it but the name. Some fragments of mas-
sive stone walls are, however, still to be found, and the line
of the moat may be distinctly traced ; an ancient hall of
large dimensions is also apparent among the partitions and
disfigurations of a modern farmer's kitchen. The identity
of the house is fixed, not only by its name and local situa-
tion, but by a continuing tradition that this was the residence
of one of the gunpowder conspirators ; and still more con-
clusively by the circumstance that an old part of the build-
ing, which was taken down a few years ago, was known by
the name of the Powder Room."
To understand the statement that Norbrook was " in the
centre of their proposed rendezvous," it must be remembered
that the blowing up of the House of Lords was to be fol-
lowed by a general Papist insurrection. The existing Govern-
ment having been summarily disposed of, a new one was to be
formed, at the head of which was to be placed the Princess
Elizabeth, she who was in after years the " Winter Queen "
of Bohemia. At this time she also was living in Warwick-
shire — at Combe Abbey, some four or five miles east of
Coventry, in the care of Lord Harington ; and the design
ROUND ABOUT STRATFORD-ON-AVON IN 1605. 31
of Catesby and his party was, immediately after the explosion,
to seize her at Combe and proclaim her accession to the
throne. Of all such subsequent operations Warwickshire
was to be the base ; and Norbrook was to be the Warwick-
shire magazine.
Lapworth and Norbrook, then, as the homes of three of
the chief ringleaders in the Plot, are places of no slight im-
portance in its history. They and the district in which they
lie are further distinguished by the temporary sojourn of
others of the notorious thirteen. At Catesby's instance the
AVrights — ^John and Christopher — took up their abode at
Lapworth ; Ambrose Rookwood, as we have seen, at Clop-
ton House; and Sir Everard Digby at Coughton Court,
about eleven miles to the west of Stratford, near Alcester.
Coughton Court was the seat of the Throckmortons. The
present owner was a minor, and it may readily be supposed
that Catesby, whose mother, as we have mentioned, was a
Throckmorton, would have no difficulty in arranging for its
temporary occupation by one of his friends. So thither, in
October, proceeded Sir Everard and his family, along with
Father Garnet and others, quitting for the nonce, as he
thought, his own seat at Gayhurst, or Gothurst, near New-
port Pagnell in Buckinghamshire, in effect quitting it for
ever.
Thus, shortly before the day fixed for the explosion, no
less than seven of the arch-traitors, to say nothing of minor
persons, might have been found in the hundred of Barlich-
way. As the time drew near, Catesby sold his property
at Bushwood (to Sir Edward Grevile of Milcote, near Strat-
ford) in order to provide funds for his enterprise. But none
the less did Warwickshire remain the general rendezvous.
One other part of the county was to be made memorable
by its connection with this wild, execrable folly. This was
32 ESS A YS AND NOTES.
Dunsmore Heath, on the other side, a few miles south of
Rugby, stretching to the east of Dunchurch. " The bloody
hunting match at Dunchurch " was the name given to " the
meet " to which Sir Everard Digby invited the Roman
Catholic gentry for Tuesday, November 5th. To do these
gentlemen justice, it must be noticed that they knew little
or nothing of the iniquity that had been concocted, or of what
was to follow it. There was a general impression that some
Recusant movement was afoot, but no particulars had been
vouchsafed. One cannot but believe that, had the scheme
of the conspirators been disclosed to them in all its enormity,
they would at once have repudiated and denounced it. It
is true that they were smarting beneath grievous injustice,
heavy and perpetual fines exacted from them, personal
penalties occasionally inflicted, but all this persecution had
not divested them of humanity and rendered them capable
of an atrocity that would justify the old adage, "homo
homini lupus," or a fresh reading of it, " homo homini dia-
bolus." The conspirators themselves had not attained such
hardness of heart with "no compunctious visitings of
nature." Even of Catesby so much may be believed, and
of the others with scarcely an exception so much is known.
They recoiled when Catesby first revealed his horrid purpose.
Not at once were they " settled," and could —
** Bind up
Each corporal agent to this terrible feat."
Nature, says the old poet, in giving men tears, confesses she
gives them most tender hearts.
** Mollissima corda
Humano generi dare se natura fatetur
Quae lacrumas dedit."
And tears cannot harden into frost in an instant ; petrifac-
ROUND ABOUT STRATFORD-ON-A VON IN 1605. 33
tion, thank Heaven, is a slow process, and ofttimes may be
retarded, may be prevented. Certainly, those Recusant
gentlemen who mustered at the Lion Inn at Dunchurch and
the Bull at Coventry that Monday and Tuesday in November,
1605, were not so lost to all sense of sound patriotism and
true manhood, as that they would have aided and abetted
such devilry as Catesby and his gang had brought themselves
to believe was of God, godly. But there they were, unin-
formed, wondering, probably expecting that their game was
to be something more than hares, and assuredly ready to
strike a good blow, if opportunity was given, for what was in
their eyes the cause of Heaven.
In this same part of the county, at Shelford, lived John
Littleton, who it was hoped would join Stephen and the
others on the Heath.
Thus intimately was Warwickshire associated with the
Gunpowder Conspiracy. We may just add that Hud-
dington, or Uddington, the home of the Winters — Thomas
and Robert, two more of the chief Thirteen — lies but just
beyond the western frontier of this same county, no great
distance from Alcester and Coughton ; that Ashby St. Legers
is situated just over the eastern border, but a few miles from
Dunchurch ; and that Holbeach, where at last the ring-
leaders were brought to bay, is in Staffordshire, the county
which bounds Warwickshire on the north-west.
HL
It is clear that the conspiracy would excite a very special
interest in every Warwickshire man and in Shakespeare.
Counties were more sharply distinguished, and county feel-
ing ran far higher in the old days than now, though it is by no
means extinct yet, nor likely to be. Wherever Shakespeare
D
34 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
was in the autumn of 1605, there can be no question, as we
have already said, that the horrid tale at which men stood
aghast would affect him the more deeply for its association
with his own neighbourhood. Had a Romanist rising taken
place, Stratford itself might have been the scene of blood-
shed and outrage. And, as a fact, conspiracy had found
close by
** A cavern dark enough
To mask" its ** monstrous visage."
In the midst of the peaceful hills that rose almost within
sight of New Place (the poet's property since 1597) treason
had made its lair. Besides the interest of locality, it is
fairly certain that he must have felt another interest in the
plot, arising from personal knowledge of some of its mem-
bers. We are not about to advance a theory that Shake-
speare was himself a powder plotter — that Guy Fawkes was
his " sworn brother ; " though, indeed, there is quite as much
— not to say more — to be said for such a theory as for many
with which the world is favoured. We commend it to the
attention of the brilliant ready-made critics with whom
our age is abundantly adorned ; and, for ourselves, all we
wish to point out is, that Shakespeare must in all probability
have been brought into personal contact with several of the
traitors. If at Stratford in September and October, he
would grow familiar, by sight at least, with Rookwood and-
his brother and their visitors — amongst others Grant, "Mr.
Winter," " Mr. Wright " (the document we quote does not
specify which of the Winters, or which of the Wrights),
Catesby. Grant, too, he may have seen at other times in
the streets of Stratford, or on the Warwick road. But it is of
a possible acquaintance in London that we are thinking; it is
of the fact that Catesby, Grant, Tresham, the Wrights, and
Thomas Winter, had all been actively concerned in the
ROUND ABOUT STRA TFORD-ON-A VON IN 1605. 35
rebellion, or miserable failure of a rebellion, attempted by
the Earl of Essex in February, 1601.
Here again is a fine opening for a theory. What a temp-
tation to prove that Shakespeare was an uncompromising
partisan of that unfortunate nobleman. However, as we do
not believe he was so, we shall deny ourselves the pleasure
of proving it, and be content to remark that, without being
a rabid partisan, he yet was attracted by a nature which with
all its faults — they were neither few nor slight — seems to
have been singularly winning and lovable. The mention
of Essex in Henry V, deserves especial notice and consider-
ation. It is quite unique in its kind. The poet is wishing
to suggest parallels to the enthusiastic welcome the victor of
Agincourt received from his people on his return from that
famous field. He says, even so did the people of Rome
greet their Caesar when he came home triumphant; and
even so would the people of England greet their Essex,
were he now returning in glory from his Irish campaign.
** But now behold.
In the quick forge and working-house of thought,
How London doth pour out her citizens !
The mayor and all his brethren in best sort,
Like to the senators of the antique Rome,
"With the plebeians swarming at their heels.
Go forth and fetch their conquering Casar in ;
As by a lower but laving likelihood^
Were now the general of our gracious Empress,
As in good time he may, from Ireland coming
Bringing rebellion broached on his sword.
How many would the peaceful city quit.
To welcome him ! Much more, and much more cause,
Did they this Harry."
This " loving likelihood " — observe that " loving " — was
never to be fulfilled. It was rather himself than rebellion
that poor Essex brought back "broached on his sword.''
36 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
But such an introduction of him, and in such language, by a
writer so chary of such allusions, is surely significant of a
more than common feeling of interest and affection. There
is another fact pointing decisively in the same direction. It
is Shakespeare's intimate friendship with the Earl of South-
ampton, who was Essex's most intimate friend. " The love
I dedicate to your lordship," runs the brief letter to South-
ampton that prefaces The Rape of Lticrece^ " is without end.
. . . . What I have done is yours; what I have to do is
yours ; being part in all I have, devoted yours. Were my
worth greater, my duty would show greater. Meantime, as
it is, it is bound to your lordship, to whom I wish long life
still lengthened with all happiness." These words, which
surely sound a note of sincerity often unheard in such epistles,
were written in 1594; but there is good ground for believing
that the feeling they express was no transient emotion, but
deep-rooted and flourishing to the end. This dear friend
was, we repeat, also Essex's dear friend. He was one of his
truest and faithfuUest supporters that fatal Sunday when
Essex, halting between ever so many opinions, half paralyzed
it would seem by the fearful difficulties amidst which he
found himself, confused and confounded by the clamour and
fury of the followers who filled the court of his house, and were
eager for action, however foolish and desperate, " extremely
appalled as divers that happened to see him then might
visibly perceive in his face and countenance, and almost
moulten with sweat, though without any cause of bodily
labour, but only by the perplexity and horror of his mind,"
passed forth into Fleet Street on the way to inevitable disaster
and ruin. At his trial, which soon followed, Southampton
stood side by side with him, and was condemned at the same
time. And, though he did not share his fate — in death they
were divided — for two long years he lay in the Tower under
ROUND ABOUT STRATFORD-ON-A VON IN 1605. 37
sentence of death. Such being Southampton's devotion to
Essex, and such Shakespeare's to Southampton, Shakespeare's
confessed relation to Essex being also such as we have seen,
we cannot doubt that Shakespeare would have some personal
knowledge of Essex's chief partisans, amongst whom, as has
been mentioned, were several of the Powder Plotters.
That extreme and violent Papists should rally around
Essex may seem not a little surprising, when we call to mind
his Puritan sympathies and connections. During the weeks
that ushered in the end, " the most eminent Puritan divines
preached daily at Essex House, to hear whose sermons the
citizens flocked in great numbers." We wonder if Catesby
and his intimates " sat under " these orators ? We presume
that, with a dispensation, they might lawfully do so. The
whole history of the Essex riot, or whatever it is to be called,
is far from clear. Probably the misguided leader scarcely
knew himself what he would be at He was a governor who
did not govern, a leader that was led ; and so all kinds of
unquiet folk gathered around him. His house was a very
cave of Adullam, and with but slight variation one might
quote the well-known description : " Everyone that was in
distress, and everyone that was in debt, and everyone that
was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he
became a captain [a merely nominal one] over them ; and
there were with him about " three " hundred men." An
odd, ill-assorted conflux. "Misery acquaints a man with
strange bedfellows." But indeed there would be much in
these Puritan discourses that the Recusant party would hear
with thorough complacency and satisfaction. " The Puritans
were in the habit of justifying resistance to authority, and
one of the preachers at Essex House went so far as to say
that the great magistrates of the kingdom had power, in case
of necessity, to control and restrain the Sovereign."
38 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
Again, the Earl and his friends had a great liking for
theatrical entertainments. "My Lord Southampton and
Lord Rutland come not to the Court," writes Rowland
White towards the close of 1599; "the one doth, but very
seldom ; they pass away the time in London merely in
going to plays every day." We might be pretty sure, if
there was no evidence on the point, that the company whose
services would be called into requisition, or whose theatre
would be frequented, would be that of which Shakespeare
was a member. But one piece of evidence there is. " The
afternoon before the Rebellion, Merrick, with a great com-
pany of others that afterwards were all in the action, had
procured to be played before them the play of deposing
* King Richard II.' When it was told him by one of the
players that the play was old, and they should have loss in
playing it, because few would come to it, there was forty
shillings extraordinary given to play, and so thereupon
played it was." Whether the play thus performed by special
request and arrangement was Shakespeare's Richard II, or
some other, it was. certainly Shakespeare's company that
was thus negotiated with; for in another account of the
transaction is given the name of the player with whom the
bargain was struck. It was Philips, and Philips was one of
Shakespeare's company.
Thus Shakespeare was probably brought into contact with
several of the Plotters, not only socially but professionally.
He had acted before them, and his plays no doubt had been
acted before them again and again.
We may confidently believe, then, that besides the general
interest in the conspiracy he would feel as an Englishman,
there would be for Shakespeare other special interests,
springing both from local and personal associations. The
thing would have for him a singular nearness and reality.
ROUND ABOUT STRATFORD-ON-A VON IN 1605. 39
IV.
Having now pointed out fully enough for our purpose the
close connection of the Plotters with Shakespeare's county
and with himself, we will for a short space turn our eyes
again towards Clopton, the suburb of Shakespeare's own
town, and see what little is to be seen of what went on there.
It was there, as has been already twice mentioned, that
Rookwood and his family located themselves in September,
1605.
The house stands in a neighbourhood where Shakespeare
possessed property, and with which he had in the very year
that especially concerns us formed a fresh monetary con-
nection. In Mky, 1602, he had bought land in that part
from William and John Combe — 107 acres of arable land.
" In July, 1605," writes Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, in that trea-
sure-house of sound and accurate information, bar the accep-
tance of certain forgeries, his Life of Shakespeare, " Shake-
speare made the largest purchase he ever completed, giving
the sum of ;^44o [equal to some ;£^i,75o of our money] for
the unexpired term of a moiety of a lease, granted in 1544
for ninety-two years, of the tithes of Stratford, Old Stratford,
Bishopton, and Welcombe. In the indenture of conveyance
he is described as of Stratford-upon-Avon, gentleman ; and,
as he is similarly designated three years earlier, when we
know that he was in London, we may conclude that after
the purchase of New Place he had taken up his permanent
abode in his native town." This would of course be con-
sistent with long visits to London from time to time. Pro-
bably enough his home had been at Stratford all along, only
he had been mostly away from it. " It appears from a letter,"
written by Abraham Sturley, January 24, 1597-8, "that
40 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
as early as 1598 the subject of Shakespeare becoming the
purchaser of these tithes had been mooted at Stratford, and
the management of them would probably require great pru-
dential care. It is not impossible that confidence was enter-
tained in Shakespeare's tact and judgment, and that this,
as well as his command of capital, produced the desire of
the Council of Stratford, who received a rent from these
tithes, that he should become the purchaser." And then
follows a copy of the indenture (pp. 210-6). Mr. Phillipps
also quotes from a copy of a rent-roll of the borough of
Stratford the following note : " Mr. Thomas Combes and
Mr. William Shakespear do hold all manner of tithes of
corn, grain, and hay in the towns, hamlets, villages, and
fields of Old Stratford, Welcomb, and Bishopton, and all
manner of tithes of wool, lamb, hemp, flax, and other
small and privy tithes, for the yearly rent of xxxiiij IL,
payable at our Lady Day and Michaelmas."
According to the Beauties of England and Wales ^ 1814,
" Clopton House is a venerable mansion, probably erected
in the latter part of the fifteenth century; but some modem
exterior alterations detract much from the general effect of
the building. In different apartments are preserved a few
pictures, and some curious articles of ancient furniture,
among which is a bed, said to have been given to Sir Hugh
Clopton by King Henry VII." Not far from it — ^a furlong
or two — at Welcombe, lived Shakespeare's fiiend John
Combe. His house (the present one standing there is "quite
a recent erection ") nestled in a southern recess of the hills
that derived their name from it, or rather from the " cwm "
where it stood. ** To the west of Alveston," says Britton,
" are Welcombe Hills, the celebrated scene of warlike opera-
tions between the Britons and Saxons. Here are extensive
entrenchments, termed the Dingles, which appear to have
ROUND ABOUT STRATFORD-ON-A VON IN 1605. 41
been formed by the latter people [they are probably British,
to begin with at least], and numerous other earthworks,
some of which were probably thrown up to cover the remains
of those who fell in battle. The rugged features of this
neighbourhood are softened by Welcombe Lodge, the hand-
some residence of George Lloyd, Esq.," "John a'Combe*s"
successor. It was in this vicinity that an inclosure was
attempted in 16 14, and successfully resisted by the Corpo-
ration, with whom Shakespeare seems to have cordially
acted. There is a brief glimpse of him in that year, in a
memorandum made by one Thomas Green, clerk of the
Corporation, who had been despatched to London about
this business: " 1614 Jovis 17 No. My cousin Shakspear
coming yesterday to town, I went to see how he did. He
told me that they assured him they meant to inclose no
farther than to Gospel Bush, and so up straight (leaving out
part of the dingles to the field) to the gate in Clopton Lodge,
and take in Salisbury piece ; and that they mean in April to
survey the land, and then to give satisfaction and not before ;
and he and Mr. Hall say they think there will be nothing
done at all." Nor was the great poet's sagacity at fault in
the matter. Nothing was done at all; though he did not
himself live to see the common ground secured to his fellow
citizens. " A petition on the subject was presented to the
Privy Council ; and in 16 18 an order was made, not only
forbidding the inclosure, but peremptorily commanding that
some steps which Combe actually seems to have commenced
in it should be at once retraced." The other memorandum
of Green's is as follows : " 23 Dec. A hall. Letters written
to Mr. Manyring [Mainwaring], another to Mr. Shakspear,
with almost all the company's hands to either. I also writ
myself to my cousin Shakspear [he was still in London ?]
the copies of all our acts, and then also a note of the incon-
42 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
veniences would happen by the inclosure." Clearly, for
private reasons if not for public, Shakespeare was much
interested in this Welcombe district.
In the heart, then, of a neighbourhood so well known to
and intimately connected with Shakespeare, came Rook-
wood to reside, as we have said. The official duties of Lord
Carew must have seldom permitted any protracted occu-
pancy of his house by himself, even since his return from
Ireland. In his absence at this time, Robert Wilson, Lord
Carew's tenant, was persuaded to admit the stranger from
Suffolk, Grant and one of the Winters assuring him of the
stranger's intimacy with his master.
He came from Coldham Hall, in the parish of Stanning-
field, where his house, built in 1574, still stands. He "was
born of Roman Catholic parents," says Jardine, " and care-
fully brought up from his childhood in the Roman Catholic
faith. He had received his education at one of the Roman
Catholic universities in Flanders ; and when he succeeded
to his inheritance upon his father's death, in 1600, his house
in Suffolk became, as it had been in his father's time, a
common asylum for persecuted priests, and mass was con-
stantly performed there ; in consequence of which he was
subjected to repeated prosecutions and penalties. It is re-
markable that he had been indicted for recusancy at the
London and Middlesex Sessions in February, 1604-5, after
the Gunpowder Plot had been contrived and arranged. He
married a daughter of Sir William Tyrwhit, of Kettleby, in
Lincolnshire, by whom he had two or three children. He
possessed an ample estate, and was specially remarkable for
his fine stud of horses, a circumstance which made him a
particularly desirable acquisition to the conspirators. At
the period of which we are speaking he was twenty-seven
years of age. He had been long the intimate friend of
ROUND ABOUT STRATFORD-ON-A VON IN 1605. 43
Catesby, whom he says * he loved and respected as his own
life ; ' and attachment to him, and the contagion of religious
enthusiasm, drew Rookwood from the bosom of his family,
and bound him to this rash and desperate conspiracy."
It was not till about Michaelmas, 1605, that Rookwood
was admitted into the horrid league, which had then existed
for some year and a half, it being in Lent, 1604, that Catesby
and John Wright and Thomas Winter first formed it. This
admission must have taken place about the time of the first
of the two eclipses, which to the superstition of the age
threatened evil things. In September was a lunar, early in
October a solar, eclipse ; and the popular mind held with
Gloucester in King Lear that " these late eclipses in the sun
and moon portend no good to us " — a passage we shall con-
sider again by-and-by. It was in London that same Sep-
tember that " Catesby told him that * for the ancient love he
had borne unto him, he would impart a matter of impor-
tance unto him ; ' and then, after administering the oath of
secrecy, he revealed to him the design of blowing up the
King and the Parliament House with powder. Rookwood
states that he was * somewhat amazed ' at the proposal, and
asked * how such as were Catholics and divers other friends
should be preserved ; ' Catesby answered that * a trick should
be put upon them.' Then Rookwood objected that * it was
a matter of conscience to take away so much blood.' But
Catesby assured him that * he might be satisfied on that
head, for though he had not yet put that case in particular
to any, he had put the like case, and had been resolved by
good authority that in conscience it might be done.' Rook-
wood still expressing scruples of conscience respecting the
lawfulness of the action, Catesby told him * that he had also
asked advice, whether if the act could not be done without
the destruction of some innocents, it might still be done,
44 ESS A YS AND NO T£S.
and was resolved that rather than the action should fail they
must also suffer as the rest did.' By these assurances
Rookwood's scruples were quieted ; " and he at once fell in
with Catesb/s machinations. Thus were his better instincts
overborne ; thus the voice of conscience smothered ; and a
gallant gentleman degraded into a base assassin. Alas for
him that he should have surrendered those Divine remon-
strances of his soul to any so-called authority of priest or
Jesuit or " bejesuited " friend. Alas that he was not " to his
own self true," and obedient to those natural promptings
which would have saved him from falsehood and shame.
Alas that he ignobly placed himself at the bidding and in
the hands of others, and submitted to believe that what
was inhuman could be religious, that villainy could be holy,
that impiety could be pious.
Such was Shakespeare^s new neighbour in the autumn of
1605. It would seem to have been just after his joining the
plot that the well-known pilgrimage to St. Winifred's Well
in Flintshire was made — made, we suppose, to procure a
blessing for the nefarious work then in hand. An odd,
strange God, the God of these people ; or did they confound
God and devil ? " The ladies of the company went barefoot
from Holt to the Well, where all remained a whole night."
To think of the prayers these pilgrims were praying !
" Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum."
It was probably after their return that Rookwood settled
at Clopton.
In a list of letters " come about this treason," made by
Levinus Munck, one unluckily lost is thus described — it is
the document we referred to above : " A paper reporting
that at Clopton there hath been with Ambrose Rockwood
\sic], John Grant, Mr. Winter [Thomas?], Mr. Ross, Mr.
ROUND ABOUT STRATFORD-ON-A VON IN 1605. 45
Townshend [of Broughton, Suffolk], Mr. Cee, Mr. Wright
[John?], Sir Edward Bushall, Robert Catesbye." We know
also that Rookwood's brother Thomas was there. So the
house was often pretty full of traitors. A strange fierce
company this in the bosom of the Welcombe Hills.
Rookwood seems scarcely to have outgrown a young
man's vanity in dress and such matters. There is mention
of a sword of his with its hilt, or hilts, as they used to say,
engraved with the passion of Christ ; and Sir William Wade,
Lieutenant of the Tower, writes about " a fair scarf that
Rucwood \sic\ made," a sort of badge, perhaps, as Sir
William speaks of "figures or ciphers on it from which
something might be gathered." "Rucwood made also a
very fair hungarian horseman's coat lined all with velvet and
other apparel exceeding costly, not fit for his degree."
Thus he would be a notable object in the streets of Stratford,
if ever he rode that way, and one that would exercise the
minds of Dogberry and Verges if haply they espied him.
But though the burghers might have their suspicions
about their new neighbours, no one would credit them with
any design so fiendish as they were presently discovered to
have entertained and matured. Some ten or eleven days
before Tuesday the 5 th, Rookwood disappeared from those
parts. He had gone up to London to be in at the death.
Then the news reached Stratford of some Papist outbreak
near Warwick. There had been some sort of muster, horses
had been stolen ; and the county was up. Suspicion at
once fell on the tenant of Clopton House, especially as his
brother Thomas had been seized attempting escape, as it
seemed, and his associates Grant and Winter were known to
have been actively concerned in the horse robbery at War-
wick. The bailifif of Stratford at once proceeded to search
the house at Clopton. Mrs. Rookwood was still there. He
46 ESS A YS AND NOTES.
found a " cloak bag " of crosses and " massing reliques," but
nothing that threw light on the disturbance, the rumours of
which spread general alarm. Presently came the news of
what had been intended at Westminster. A few days later
Mrs. Grant, Mrs. Percy, and the wives of other conspirators
were apprehended and sent up to London, Mrs. Rookwood
amongst them, we suppose ; and so there was an end of the
traitors* occupancy of Clopton House.
Here, before we quit the scene, is a copy of two docu-
ments that mention it preserved at the State Paper Office, in
the Gunpowder Plot Book.
" The examination of Thomas Rookwood, gent., of Clop-
ton, in the county of Warwick, taken before Sir Fulk Grevil,
day and year aforesaid [Nov. 8, 1605]: This examinate
being demanded upon what occasion he passeth into these
parts, saith he was going to Worcester to meet with one
Ingram that had sold him a hawk. Being demanded why
he fled from his way at Alcester, said because Townsend and
Johnson that were of his company said the town was dis-
quieted, which made them return out of the way to Bidford,
when he was with the rest apprehended.
" The examination of William Johnson, servant to Mr.
Rookwood of Clopton in the county of Warwick, yeoman :
This examinate being demanded for what cause he past this
way saith he was going to Worcester to see a kinsman he had
there. Being demanded how young Mr. Rookwood and Town-
send came into this county, saith that they both had a purpose
to deal with a hawk with a gentleman in Hereford. [* Young
Mr. Rookwood,' said Worcester.] Being demanded why he
fled when he came to Alcester after the troops were past, saith
when he came and saw the town disturbe \sic\ he went with
Mr. Rook [sic] and Townsend the contrary way out of the
way to Bidford, when he was apprehended."
ROUND ABOUT STRA TFORD-ON-A VON IN 1605. 47
There are "examinations" of other servants of Rookwood,
appointed to go from Suifolk to meet him at Norbrook.
Meanwhile the master was fleeing for his life. Early on
Tuesday morning those of the Plotters who were in town
were aware that their plot was discovered. " Richard
Johnson " had been seized the preceding midnight, and,
though he had disclosed nothing, it was clearly time to be
gone. One Henry Tatnall met two gentlemen, afterwards
thought to be conspirators, in Lincoln's Inn Fields that
morning, and heard one say: " God's wounds ! we are
wonderfully beset, and all is marred." They were soon
tearing along the road for Dunchurch. Rookwood started
last, but, better mounted, soon overtook the others — over-
took Keyes about three miles beyond Highgate, then Catesby
and John Wright beyond Brickhill ; then a little farther on
Percy and Christopher Wright; and "they five rode to-
gether ; and Percy and John Wright cast off their cloaks
and threw them into a hedge to ride the more speedily."
And so to Ashby St. Legers, Rookwood having covered the
eighty miles in seven hours. Then on to Dunchurch, where
it soon got out that the grand blow that was to be struck,
whatever it was, had been thwarted, and all was lost. The
assembly rapidly dissolved ; and the ringleaders, left almost
alone, and it would seem wellnigh planless and desperate,
dashed on through the night by or through Warwick — Grant
and the others went through, and stole fresh horses, Rook-
wood went round — to Norbrook, reached about daybreak,
where they rested awhile, as they well had need ; then, on
the Wednesday, through Alcester to Huddington, the
Winters' house ; on the Thursday, at sunrise, to Whewell
Grange, where they helped themselves to Lord Windsor's
arms and armour; then, with yet thinner numbers, on to
Holbeach, the house of Stephen Littleton, where, during the
48 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
night, they made what preparations they could for the
assault certain to be made on the morrow. It was here,
on Friday the 8th, that some powder that was drying ex-
ploded, and Rookwood and others were severely burnt.
Sir Richard Walsh, Sheriff of Worcestershire, with the posse
comitatus^ was soon at the gate. "When I came," says
Th. Winter, who had been outside at the time of the ex-
plosion — " I found Mr. Catesby reasonable well, Mr. Percy,
both the Wrights, Mr. Rookwood, and Mr. Grant. I
asked them what they resolved to do; they answered,
* We mean here to die.' I said again I would take such
part as they did. About eleven of the clock came the
company to beset the house, and as I walked into the
court I was shot into the shoulder, which lost me the
use of my arm ; the next shot was the elder Wright shot
dead; after him the younger Mr. Wright; and fourthly,
Ambrose Rookwood [shot, not shot dead]. Then said
Mr. Catesby to me, standing before the door they were
to enter : * Stand by me, Tom, and we will die together.'
*Sir,' quoth I, *I have lost the use of my right arm,
and I fear that will cause me to be taken.' So, as we
stood close together, Mr. Catesby, Mr. Percy, and myself,
they two were shot, as far as I could guess, with one
bullet; and then the company entered upon me, hurt
me in the belly with a pike, and gave me the other
wounds, until one came behind and caught hold of both
my arms."
One more scene we will look at, in which Mr. Rookwood,
of Clopton, plays a signal part. Let us pass over his trial
with his surviving fellows — the heads of Catesby and Percy
had for some time been grinning "upon the side of the
Parliament House," that of Tresham on London Bridge ;
how he spoke of his attachment to Catesby ; how he begged
ROUND ABOUT STRA TFORD-ON-A VON IN 1605. 49
for mercy, that he might be punished " corporaliter non mor-
taliter; " and see the last act in his miserable tragedy.
The old sentence in such cases was carried out in all its
barbarity, at which, in the then state of public feeling, one
can scarcely wonder. Indeed, according to a letter of the
time, "there were some motions made in Parliament about a
more sharp death for the gunpowder conspirators." Four —
Sir Edward Digby, Robert Winter, Grant, and Bates — were
executed at the west end of St. PauPs Churchyard ; the
others — Th. Winter, Keyes, Fawkes, and he in whom we
are here specially interested — in the Old Palace Yard at
Westminster, opposite the Parliament House, now grimly
decorated, as we have just mentioned, with the heads of
Catesby and Percy. The procession to the Old Palace
Yard " passed by a house in the Strand in which Rook-
wood's wife lodged. She had placed herself at an open
window, and Rookwood, raising himself as well as he could
from the hurdle on which he was drawn, called upon his
wife to * pray for him.' She replied in a clear, strong voice,
* I will ! I will ! And do you offer yourself with a good
heart to God and your Creator ! I yield you to Him with as
full an assurance that you will be accepted of Him as when
He gave you to me.' " So a contemporary MS. Evidently
of a high and inflexible spirit was this lady — something of
the antique Roman in her — who could look on such a sight
and speak so firmly as she looked. The rough journey was
soon completed. Then kneeling and often bowing their
heads to the ground, the doomed men prayed, "but no
voice heard, saving now and then * O Jesu, Jesu, save me
and keep me,' &c., which words they repeated many times
upon the ladder," and soon all was over.
Such were the ends of Mr. Grant of Norbrook, and Mr.
Rookwood, late of Clopton.
E
so ESS A YS AND N07ES.
V.
As Gunpowder Plot was thus brought near, so to speak, to
Shakespeare, those scenes at the west end of St. Paul's and
in Old Palace Yard, so linked, as we have seen, with Strat-
ford-on-Avon, it might be expected that we should find in
his plays special allusions to an event that was in such a
manner intruded upon his special notice. For our own part,
we think that expectations of this kind are based upon
ignorance of Shakespeare's way of working. But there are
one or two passages — ^we ourselves shall lay no great stress
upon them — which have been supposed to be suggested,
and may have been suggested, by this same conspiracy.
There is a passage in King Lear — we have ahready quoted
a few words from it — which is possibly not impertinent.
Certainly it should be remembered that it was in all proba-
bility about the close of 1605, or in the course of 1606, that
King Lear was written. Likely enough it was begun in the
one year and finished in the other. " These late eclipses in
the sun and moon," says Gloucester, who is ready to explain
what goes wrong by any theory but that of personal culpa-
bility, "portend no good to us. Though the wisdom of
nature [/.^. natural philosophy] can reason it thus and thus,
yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects : love
cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide : in cities, mutinies :
in countries, discord : in palaces, treason : and the bond
cracked 'twixt son and father We have seen the
best of our time ; machinations, hoUowness, treachery, and
all ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our graves."
Surely this speech would have a very ciirious significance in
1606 ; and it can scarcely be accidental that it was written
in or about that year.
ROUND ABOUT STRA TFORD-ON-A VON IN 1605. 51
The Porter in Macbeth amuses himself by fancying that
he is, for the nonce, the janitor of hell. Knocks come
pretty frequent at that door; and amongst other arrivals
" here's an equivocator that could swear in both scales
against either scale; who committed treason enough for
God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven. O come
in, equivocator." The exact date of the composition of
Macbeth cannot be absolutely ascertained. Malone assigns
it to 16 10, which is certainly too late; Dyceto 1606, which
is probably not far out. That it is not later than 1606 could
be shown pretty definitely, if our space permitted. One
could not wish for a truer description of the Powder Plot
than that it was a committing of treason for God's sake.
That flattering unction the unhappy plotters laid constantly
to their soul ; it was their misguided boast, that they were
championing the true faith.
And then the mention of equivocation. It is true that
great scandals had been previously caused by the Jesuits
and their practice of this art ; but Father Garnet had sur-
passed his predecessors. To the average Englishman of
the day who watched that worthy's proceedings, the distinc-
tion between equivocating and what is vulgarly termed
lying seemed impossible to recognize. To subtly discrimi-
nate between propositions, mental, verbal, written, mixed,
was quite beyond his feeble capacity. And in considering
the question of Garnet's complicity in the Plot, we must
plainly assert we do not see how, all things considered, any
weight whatever can be attached to his own denial of it.
We know that on one occasion — we refer to his denying
that he had had an interview with Hall — he saw his way to
absolutely deny a fact, and what he knew to be a fact ; and
to his contemporaries his conscience seemed to be remark-
ably elastic in such respects. Equivocation sank into the
52 ESSA YS'AND NOTES.
worst repute; and that equivocators could by no means
" equivocate to heaven," but verily would succeed in equi-
vocating to a very different region, was certainly the general
impression and feeling. On the whole, the passage looks
very like an allusion to the Plot, and especially to Garnet,
as Malone long ago pointed out. It is just what would be
commonly said of him wherever his participation in the
Plot was believed ; and it was generally believed, nor has it
yet been successfully contradicted. He " committed trea-
son enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to
heaven."
Probably written about the same time, about 1606, Timon
of Athens contains a passage that the Plot illustrates, if it
did not suggest. It is held, and not without reason, that
this play is not all by Shakespeare; and it may be that
the passage we are about to quote may not be from his
hand, though in our opinion it is fully in his manner. Any-
how it appears in a play of which he was joint author, and
so we may believe received his assent and approval, if it was
not actually penned by him. Sempronius, applied to by
Timon for help, has just cloaked the baseness of his refusal
with the pretence that he is affronted at not having been
applied to earlier. "Who bates mine honour," says the
mean creature, making a show of dignity, " shall not know
my coin ; " and so exit " Excellent ! " cries Timon's ser-
vant, when his back is turned ; " your lordship's a goodly
villain. The devil knew not what he did when he made
man politic ; he crossed himself by 't ; and I cannot think
but in the end the villanies of man will set him clear. How
fairly this lord strikes to appear foul ! takes virtuous copies
to be wicked, like those that under hot ardent zeal would set
whole realms on fire J^
Possibly enough other relevant quotations might be made.
ROUND ABOUT STRATFORD-ON-A VON IN 1605. 53
Knight quotes in this connexion certain well-known lines in
the Winter's Tale, a play of later date, viz. I. ii. 357-61, but
the reference there seems rather to the recent assassination
of Henry IV. of France.
But what is more important than' any such references,
real or fancied, is to consider how Shakespeare illustrates
the conspiracy in a more general way ; to notice how it not
unnaturally belongs to such an age as he depicts for us;
how the men who were conspicuous in it are of the same
breed with those whom his supreme art has made so
strangely familiar to all posterity.
Or, instead of using Shakespeare to illustrate it, we may,
with not less convenience and profit, use this conspiracy to
illustrate Shakespeare. There is, indeed, an aspect of it
which is merely distressing and horrid. When we view it
as a masterpiece of bigotry — ^bigotry at its fiercest and
worst — ^it simply inspires disgust and loathing; we must
bow our heads with shame that human beings can fall
so low, that the name of religion can be so foully misused,
so grossly profaned. But there are other features that in-
spire rather pity and admiration, and remind us that these
Plotters, too, were the children of the great Elizabethan
age.
It was an age of passion; of passionate hates and
passionate loves ; of eager devotions, of fervid abhorrences ;
of infinite tenderness, implacable fierceness ; of the keenest
readiness to do or die — to do and die.
These violent, excitable, ardent, faithful, wild, impetuous
spirits, are they not, then, the children of their age? Writh-
ing with a fierce impatience beneath the intolerant tyranny
which would fain have torn from them the old religious
creed of their race — a creed deeply rooted in their nature
and with tendrils intertwined with their heart-strings— stung
54 ESSA YS AND NOTES,
to a burning resentment by the wrongs daily inflicted on
them and theirs; mad for revenge; reckless mutineers
against the order that oppressed them ; defiant of law and
defiant of fate ; true unto death to each other and their
cause; still intrepid and fixed in the midst of desperate
fortunes ; in the very jaws of ruin unconquered and un-
conquerable — it is impossible to observe these men without
seeing that they are of the same flesh and blood with those
heroes that won for the reign of Queen Elizabeth its honour
and glory ; that, however deluded and damnable were the
uses to which they unworthily lent themselves, they were
not unendowed with the splendid energy and valour and
devotion which on other fields achieved triumphs that to
this day we Englishmen cannot remember without a thrill
of joy and pride.
What especially characterised the Shakespearian age,
both for good and evil, was the comparatively free play of
life — the unfettered movement of nature. It was this
characteristic that made it so favourable to art. As in the
public exercises of their gymnasia and palaestrae the Greek
sculptor studied the physical form, and attained that inti-
mate familiarity with it that enabled him to reproduce it
with a faithfulness and power never equalled; in the same
manner in our Elizabethan age our dramatists studied mind
and character, and were enabled to represent the humours
and tlie passions of their time with an insight and force that
place their works amongst the most precious records of
humanity. Shakespeare saw ** the very pulse of the
machine." The springs of action were disclosed to him.
He looked into the inmost heart of things. " Oflf, off", you
landings ; " and nature stood revealed before him, disguise-
less, not " sophisticated."
We say that the study of Gunpowder Plot, stamped as its
ROUND ABOUT STRA TFORD-ON-A VON IN 1605. 55
chief agents are with certain characteristics of their age, may
be of no mean service in helping us to appreciate Shake-
speare. Into what close neighbourhood with it he was
brought it has been the special purpose of this paper to
show.
S6 £SSA ys AND NOTES.
III.
CHAUCER AND SHAKESPEARE.
(From the Quarterly Review, January, 1873.)
IT is now about a century since the study of Chaucer
began to revive. Between the time of Verstegan and
Tyrwhitt — the Restitution of Decayed Intelligence was pub-
lished in 1605, Tyrwhitt's memorable work in 1775 — he had,
by slow degrees, fallen nearly altogether out of the general
knowledge of men. He, whom Spenser called " the well of
English undefiled," was vulgarly accused of having poisoned
and corrupted the springs of his native tongue. He whom
that same Spenser — the sweetest melodist of our literature
— looked up to as his verse-master and exemplar, was stig-
matized as a very metrical cripple and idiot. And what
little acquaintance there was maintained with him was due
to versions of certain of his poems made by the facile pens
of Dryden and of Pope; so completely had he fallen on
what were for him "evil days" and "evil tongues." To
Tyrwhitt belongs the honour of first reinstating the old poet
on the pedestal from which he had been so rudely deposed
so long a time. Proper consideration being made for the
age in which that admirable scholar lived, his edition of
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales must be pronounced a wonder
of erudition and of faithful labour. Certainly the figure of
Chaucer which he presented to the eyes of his time is not a
quite genuine thing ; there are traces on it of the whitewash
or the paint with which the eighteenth century thought it
well to " touch up " ancestral images ; but yet it is not easy
CHA UCER AND SHAKESPEARE, 57
to overstate the importance or the merit of the service he
performed. From the publication of his volumes may be
dated the renewal of the critical and the appreciative study
of the greatest literary productions of the English Middle
Ages. The impulse they gave has been perpetually
strengthened and multiplied by various tendencies and
movements, both of a general and a particular character.
At the present time a Chaucer Society has been formed, and
under the zealous leadership of Mr. Furnivall, its founder
and organizer and almost sole worker, is doing excellent
service ^ in bringing within common reach the original texts
of the great poet. Of various other ways in which in the
course of this century, and especially in our own generation,
some popular, as well as scholarly, familiarity with one of our
greatest minds has been encouraged and promoted, it is not
our purpose now to speak. Let it suffice to say that Chaucer
has never been known since his own day more intelligently
and more adniiringly than he seems likely to be during the
last quarter of this nineteenth century.
It is certain that this Chaucerian revival is not the result
of any mere antiquarianism, but of a genuine poetic vitality.
There can be no better testimony to the true greatness of
the old poet than that half a thousand years after the age. in
which he wrote he is held in higher estimation than ever ;
that, whatever intermissions of his popularity there may have
/been in times that cared nothing for, as they knew little of,
the great Romantic School to which he belonged, and that
were wholly incapable of understanding the very language in
which he expressed and transcribed his genius, he this day
speaks with increasing force and power. Through all the
obsoletenesses of his language, and all the lets and impedi-
^ So feur as its funds, which, we are sorry to say, are by no means
flourishing, allow it.
58 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
ments to a full enjoyment of his melody caused by our igno-
rance of fourteenth-century English, through all the conven-
tional and social differences which separate his time from
ours, we yet recognize a profoundly human soul, with a
marvellous power of speech. We are discovering that he is
not only a great poet, but one of our greatest. It is not too
much to say that the better acquaintance with Chaucer's
transcendent merits is gradually establishing the conviction
that not one among all poets deserves so well as he the
second place.
Chaucer and Shakespeare have much in common. How-
ever diverse the form of their greatest works, yet in spirit
there is a remarkable likeness and sympathy. Their geniuses
differ rather in degree than in kind. Chaucer is in many
respects a lesser Shakespeare.
Chaucer lived generations before the dramatic form was
ripe for the use of genius. In his day it had scarcely yet
advanced beyond the rude dialogue and grotesque portrai-
ture of the Miracle -play. ^ In fact at that time that rare
growth, which two centuries later was to put forth such ex-
quisite imperishable flowers, had hardly yet emerged from its
* Absalon of the Milleres Tale : —
** Sometime to shew his lightnesse and maistrie
He plaieth Herode on a skaffold hie. "
In the Elizabethan age thiis part of Herod had become a proverb of
rant ; so that Hamlet uses the name as the very superlative of noise
(act iii., scene 2). The Miller himself cries out "in Pilate's voice."
The wife of Bath, with Clerk Jankin and her gossip dame Ales, goes to
Playes of Miracles. ' Shakespeare laughs at the rough amateurs of the
old stage in the by-play of the Midsummer Nighfs Dream. In Chau>
cer*s age perhaps Bottom would have been regarded as a very Roscius,
and that interlude of Pyramus and Thisbe might have drawn genuine
tears down medieval cheeks.
CHAUCER AND SHAKESPEARE, 59
native earth ; it was yet only embryonic. Chaucer stands
in relation to the supreme Dramatic Age in a correspondent
position to that held by Scott. Chaucer lived in the morn-
ing twilight of it, Scott in the evening. There can be little
doubt that both would have added to its lustre — that
England would have boasted one more, and Scotland at
least one great dramatist — had they been born later and
earlier respectively ; but Chaucer could not even descry it in
the future, so far off was it, and it was Scott's fortune to look
back upon it in the swiftly receding distance.
But although the form which was to receive such splendid
usage from Shakespeare, and to prove the very amplest and
fittest and noblest body for the highest dramatic spirit, was
not yet ready for wear in the culminating epoch of the Middle
Ages, yet that dramatic energy which blazed out so brilliantly
at a later period was already at work, and insisting on some
representation. It worked with vehemence in Chaucer. He
is pre-eminently the dramatic genius, not only of mediaeval
England, but of mediaeval Europe. The great Italians of
the bright dawn of modem literature were not of the drama-
tic order. Much as Chaucer undoubtedly owed to them,
they furnished him with no sort of dramatic precedent or
example. He is the first in time of modem dramatical
spirits ; and one must travel far back into the ancient times
before one meets with anybody worthy of comparison with
him. Certainly if, as has been remarked, it was in Dante
that Nature showed that the higher imagination had not
perished altogether with Virgil, it was in Chaucer that she
showed that dramatic power had not breathed its last with
Plautus and Terence.
In respect of means of expression Chaucer was placed in
a much more unprovided and destitute position than was
Shakespeare. We have already seen that neither Tragedy
6o ESSA YS AND NOTES,
nor Comedy,^ in the strict sense of those terms, was known
in his day; whereas nothing can be falser than to make;
Shakespeare say, as Dryden makes him say, —
" I found not, but created first the stage.
a
The stage was already not only in existence, but occupied
by wits of no contemptible rank, when Shakespeare appeared
in Town. Shakespeare had in Marlowe a dramatic master.
The pupil presently outshone the master; but of the in-
fluence of that master there can be no doubt, though perhaps
it has not been, and is not, as adequately recognized and
acknowledged as it should be by Shakespearian critics and
commentators. And Marlowe did not stand alone ; he was
one, certainly the most eminent one, of a group, whose
starry lights it is not easy to see in the intense brightness
flowing from the great sun that uprose amongst them ; but
there they were and are, of no faint brilliancy, so long as
they had the firmament to themselves, unsuffused by an
overpowering glory. But for Chaucer there were no such
predecessors at home or abroad. Naturally enough, it
would seem that it was not till comparatively late in life that
he discovered the best vehicle of self-expression. For many
years his genius struggled for a fitting language. Like all
^ See the prologue to Monkes Tale : —
" Tragedis is to seyn a certyn storie,
As olde bookes maken us memorie
Of hem that stood in greet prosperite
And is y-fallen out of heigh degre
Into miserie, and endith wrecchedly;
And thay ben versifyed comunly
Of six feet, which men clepe exametron.
In prose been eek endited many oon ;
In metre eek, in mony a sondry wise."
As to the term Comedy, observe, for instance, Dante's use of it.
CHA UCER AND SHAKESPEARE. 6i
poets, he began by imitating the models he found current.
He dreamed dreams, and saw visions in the conventional
mode. He echoed whatever sweet sounds reached his quick
Sensitive ears from any quarter. He translated, with a
quite touching humble-mindedness, received masterpieces
of French and of Italian literature. Through all these
labours his originality was gradually developing. For all his
eflforts his genius would not keep to the beaten path, but
would perpetually strike out some new way for itself and
forget the appointed route. At last he started altogether
alone, looking no longer for old footprints to retrace or any
established guide-posts. He discovered a fair wide country
that had lain untrodden for ages, over whose tracks the grass
or the moss had grown, and here he advanced as in some
fresh new world : —
" Pamassi deserta per ardua dulcis
Raptat amor ; juvat ire jugis, qua nulla priorum
Castaliam molli devertitur orbita clivo."
Chaucer's great work is but a noble fragment. It seems
certain that many troubles beset the declining years of his
life. We think it may be doubted whether he was endowed
with that excellent commercial prudence which so eminently
distinguished Shakespeare. It was certainly a happy cir-
cumstance for Shakespeare — a circumstance due in a great
measure, it may be believed, to his own sound judgment —
that he never became in any way a satellite or retainer of the
Court, but could escape from the unwholesome atmosphere
of Whitehall to his home at Stratford. Chaucer was not
so fortunate. He was attached to one of the most ex-
travagant and frivolous circles that ever gathered round a
monarch of a like description. However noble-natured, he
could scarcely live in such company without some contami-
62 ESS A YS AND NOTES,
nation. Assuredly his works have stains upon them con-
tracted in that evil air, much as Beaumont and Fletcher are I
flushed and spotted by the contagions of James I.'s time.
And with that Court connection it is impossible not to
associate the extreme pecuniary difficulties, of which there
are only too manifest signs at a certain period of Chaucer's
life. Probably it was these piteous, but seemingly not in-
evitable or reproachless, distresses that impeded the com-
pletion of the Canterbury Tales, The original design,
indeed, is in itself too vast for realization. Chaucer com-
mits the same error in this respect as Spenser does. But it
may well be believed that had Chaucer matured his work,
he would either have retrenched his plan, or by some device
have brought its execution within tolerable dimensions.
The part that happily was written has evidently not received
the finishing touch. The Prologue itself, perhaps, was never
finally revised ; as it stands it contains incompatible state-
ments as to the number of the pilgrims; in the case of
the " Persoun " it deviates from the programme in not
telling us —
" in what array that "he " was inne."
Had the work been fully completed, especially had more of
those Inter-prologues been written, in which Chaucer's dra-
matic power more particularly displays itself, and the figures
portrayed in the initial Prologue are with admirable skill
shown in self-consistent action, being permitted to speak for
themselves and develop their own natures, there can be little
doubt that the claims upon our admiration would have been
greatly multiplied.
Chaucer then stands at a considerable disadvantage as
compared with Shakespeare, both in respect of the dramatic
appliances of his time and in respect of the works represen-
tative of his genius. Chaucer, as we have seen, found ready
CHAUCER AND SHAKESPEARE. 63
to hand no literary form such as should worthily interpret his
mind, and was many years searching before he found one,
and, when at last he found it, was somewhat obstructed in
the free use of it by troubles and cares that divorced him
from his proper task. Moreover the English of his day,
though already a copious and versatile tongue, was some-
thing rude and inflexible in comparison with the Elizabethan
language. In several passages it is clear that he is conscious
of certain difliculties attendant on the use of such an instru-
ment A true instinct led him to choose English for his
service rather than French, which his less far-seeing contem-
porary Gower chose at least for his early piece, the Speculum
Meditantis^ and for his Balades ; but his choice exposed him
to various perplexities inseparable from the transitional con-
dition of the object of it.
Fragmentary as his great work is, it is enough to show
how consummate was his genius. Not more surely did that
famous footprint on the sands tell the lonely islander of
Defoe's story of a human presence than Chaucer's remains
assure us that a great poet was amongst us when such pieces
were produced.
We have said that his genius exhibits a remarkable affinity
to that of Shakespeare — a closer affinity, we think, than that
of any other English poet. To Chaucer belongs in a high
measure what marks Shakespeare supremely — a certain in-
definable grace and brightness of style, an incomparable
archness and vivacity, an incessant elasticity and freshness,
an indescribable ease, a never-faltering variety, an incapa-
bility of dulness. These men "toil not, neither do they
spin," at least so far as one can see. The mountain comes
to them ; they do not go to it. They wear their art " lightly,
like a flower." They never pant or stoop with efforts and
strainings. They are kings that never quit their thrones.
64 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
with a world at their feet. The sceptre is natural in their
hands ; the purple seems their proper wearing. They
never cease to scatter their jewels for fear of poverty ; the
treasury is always overflowing, because all things bring them
tribute.
For skill in characterization who can be placed between
Chaucer and Shakespeare ? Is there any work, except the
" theatre " of Shakespeare, that attempts, with a success in
any way comparable, the astonishing task which Chaucer
sets himself? He attempts to portray the entire society of
his age from the crown of its head to the sole of its foot —
from the knight, the topmost figure of mediaeval life, down
to the peasant and the cook ; and the result is a gallery
of life-like portraits, which has no parallel anywhere, with
one exception, for variety, truthfulness, humanity. These
are no roughly drawn, rudely featured outlines, without ex-
pression and definiteness, only recognizable by some imper-
tinent symbol, or when we see the name attached, like some
collection of ancient kings, or of " ancestors " where there
prevails one uniform vacuity of countenance, and, but for
the costume or the legend, one cannot distinguish the First
of his house from the Last. They are all drawn with an
amazing discrimination and delicacy.^ There is nothing of
caricature, but yet the individuality is perfect. That the
same pencil should have given us the Prioress and the Wife
* Chaucer's sound taste shrunk altogether from every form of cari-
cature. His humour, boisterous enough sometimes, at others wonder-
fully fine and delicate, is always truthful. His Tale of Sir Thopas is
one of the best parodies in our language. He tells it with the utmost
possible gravity, looking as serious as Defoe or Swift in their " driest '*
moments ; and, only if you watch well, can you detect a certain mis-
chievous twinkle in his eyes. Some worthy people, indeed, have not
detected this twinkle, and have soberly registered Sir Topas amongst
the legitimate heroes of chivalrous romance.
CffA UCER AND SHAKESPEARE, 65
of Bath^ the Knight and the Sompnour, the Parson and the
Pardoner ! These various beings, for beings they are, are as
distinct to us now as when he who has made them immortal
saw them move out through the gates of the " Tabard," a
motley procession, nearly five hundred years since. So far
as merely external matters go, the Society of the Middle
Ages is perpetuated with a minuteness not approached else-
where. We know exactly how it looked to the bodily eye.
Chaucer addresses himself deliberately to this exhaustive
portrayal : —
**But natheles whiles I have tyme and space,
Or that I ferthere in this tale pace,
Me thinketh it accordant to resoun
To telle yow alle the condicioun
Ofeche ofhem^ so as it semed me,
And which they weren and of what degi'Cy
And eek in whcU array that they were inne.^*
Surely a quite unique programme ; and it is carried out with
profound conscientiousness and power.
We ask, who among our poets, except Shakespeare, shall
be placed above Chaucer in this domain of art ? In our
opinion there is not one of the Elizabethans that deserves
that honour. There is an endless variety of creative power,
and the offspring is according. Spenser is, in a way, a great
creator; he fills the air around him with a population bom
of his own teeming fancy ; but these children of Spenser are
not human children, but rather exquisite phantoms, with
bodies, if they may be called embodied, of no earthly tissue,
mere delicate configurations of cloud and mist. They are
very ghosts, each one of whom pales and vanishes if a cock
crows, or any mortal sound strikes their fine ears : —
" Ter frustra comprensa manus efFugit imago,
Par levibus ventis volucrique simillima somno."
F
66 ESSA YS AND NOTES,
And yet, as man is made in the image of God, so certainly
the creatures of the poet should be made in the image of
man. There is no higher model to be aimed at. Man is the
culminating form of the world as we know it, or can know it.
Spenser's creatures may thrive in their native land of
" Faerie ; " but their " lungs cannot receive our air." Some-
thing more existent and real are the lovely presences
that owe their being to Beaumont and Fletcher — Aspatia,
Bellario, Ordella. Assuredly Ordella is rich in sons and
daughters such as she spoke of in that high dialogue with
Thierry : —
** He that reads me
When I am ashes, is my son in wishes ;
And those chaste dames that keep my memory,
Singing my yearly requiems, are my daughters."
But scarcely are she and that passing fair sisterhood of which
she is one formed of human clay. They stand out from the
crowd with whom they mix as shapes of a celestial texture.
One can only think of them as white-robed sanctities. In
fact, they are the natural counterparts of those grosser
beings that are only too common in the plays of the authors
who drew them. A painter of devils must now and then
paint angels by way of relief. Perhaps it is not too much to
say that all the characters of these writers are either above
or below human nature. They cannot show us humanity
without some sort of exaggeration. Ben Jonson has hardly
succeeded better in this respect. One grave defect in all
his creations is what may be called their monotony. There
is no flexibility of disposition, no free play of nature. More-
over, his works exhibit too plainly the travail and effort with
which they were composed. One seems to be taken into
his workshop, and see him toiling and groaning, and, in the
very act of elaboration, shaping now this limb and now that.
CHAUCER AND SHAKESPEARE. 67
The greatest master of characterization of that age next to
Shakespeare is certainly Massinger. Sir Giles Overreach
and Luke are both real men. Luke is a true piece of
nature, not all black-souled, nor all white, but of a mixed
complexion. But the area which Massinger could make his
own was of limited dimensions. When he stepped across its
limits, his strength failed him, and he was even as other men.
To pass on in this necessarily rapid survey to a later
period Goldsmith alone amongst our later poets has left
us a portrait that deserves to compare with one by Chaucer.
It is that ever-charming portrait of the Village Preacher, a
not unworthy pendant of the "Parson," by which, indeed,
it was indirectly inspired. He has given us duplicates of
it in prose in the persons of the Vicar of Wakefield and
of the Man in Black. There is a tradition that he who
sat to Chaucer for the Parson was no other than Wicliflfe.
It seems fairly certain that Goldsmith's original was his
own father. That was the one figure he could draw with
the utmost skill, the deepest feeling. Since Goldsmith
there has arisen in our literature no consummate portrait-
painter in verse, unless an exception be made in favour of
Browning. Scott's creative power did not come to him when
he wrote in metre. Shelley's creations are of the Spenserian
type — fair visions, refined immaterialities,
" Shapes that haunt Thought's wildernesses."
Has Tennyson's Arthur human veins and pulses ? He lived
and lives somewhat, perhaps, in that earliest of the Arthurian
books — the Morte (T Arthur — the supposed relic of an Epic ;
but in the later treatments he has become more and more
impalpable and airy, and only visible to us as to Guinevere
when
" more and more
The moony vapour rolling round the king,
68 ESSA YS AND NOTES,
Who seem'd the phantom of a giant in it,
Enwound him fold by fold, and made him gray
And grayer, till himself became as mist
Before her, moving ghostlike to his doom."
The Arthur of the Idylls^ looking at his younger self in the
earliest Tennysonian poem that celebrates him, might say of
himself what Marlborough in his old age is reported to have
said when he looked at a picture of his youth : " I was once
a Man 1 " He has become a thinly clothed Idea.
Perhaps Mr. Browning possesses the highest dramatic
power amongst the poets of this century, but his power is
rather analytical than constructive. Mr. William Morris,
the professed disciple of Chaucer, affords a striking contrast
to his master in this regard. The Life and Death of Jason
and The Earthly Paradise have many charms and excel-
lencies ; but amongst these the lifelike delineation of cha-
racter is not to be numbered.
We must turn to our prose writers if we would find out of
Shakespeare any parallel to the excellence and, at the same
time, to the variety of Chaucer's personae ; for it is in prose,
since the Elizabethan age, that the highest creative power
of our literature has expressed itself. The Massingers and
Fletchers and Fords have turned novelists in the latter
days. Addison and Steele, those genial literary partners, the
Beaumont and Fletcher of the prose period in this respect
of collaboration, have sketched a group which it is not unin-
teresting to compare with that of the Prologue. As in the
time of Richard II. men went on pilgrimage in companies, so
in Queen Anne's reign they formed clubs. The Spectator ^ it will
be remembered, in his opening papers describes the members
of the Club by a committee of which his delightful serial was
to be conducted. The account of himself comes first ; he is
as reserved as the poet of the Canterbury Tales is social, only
CHAUCER AND SHAKESPEARE, 69
like him in the keenness of his powers of observation. Then
comes the knight Sir Roger, who is to be the real hero of
the work. Sir Roger is far beyond praise. On him Addi-
soii lavishes all the wealth of his exquisite humour. In
Chaucer's day the knight was too awful a personage to be
trifled with. There are only three characters in the Pro-
logue in whose painting the overflowing fun of the artist is
checked and repressed, and the gentle mockery dies out of
his eyes for a while, and he is all gravity and reverence ; and
of these the Knight is one. But, in fact, knight does not
answer to knight. Sir Roger rather corresponds to the
Franklin of Chaucer ; and perhaps the nearest equivalent to
Chaucer's Knight in the Spectator's list is Captain Sentry, but
there is no quite correspondent figure, so utterly had society
shifted and changed since the Middle Ages. Then comes the
Templar who, if he pairs off with any one of the Chaucerian
society, must go with the Clerk of Oxenford ; but the one
is a real student, the other something of a mere dilettanti.
Next in order is Sir Andrew Freeport, the merchant, a figure
that can never be absent from any English circle that is meant
to be at all representative, of much greater note in the early
eighteenth century than in the late fourteenth, and accord-
ingly treated with deeper respect by Steele than by Chaucer,
though there is a curious similarity of traits, showing that
both writers drew from nature. Then there is Captain
Sentry, who, in some sort, as we have said, is to be matched
with the Knight of the Pilgrimage. Sixth is Will Honey-
comb, a man about town, a young, frivolous, and unprofit-
able being, for whom, to the honour of the older age be it
said, there is no responsive type whatever. Lastly is recorded
" a clergyman, a very philosophic man, of general learning,
great sanctity of life, and the most exact good breeding ; "
with whom, of course, " a pore Persoun of a toun " is to be
70 ESS A YS AND NOTES.
compared or contrasted. Observe the order of the cha-
racteristics of the " Augustan " divine : he is learned, pure-
lived, and well-bred 1 Is there not something piteously
significant in this bathos ? He had a high sense of holiness,
and of etiquette ! Chaucer never commits such a frightful
anticlimax. On the whole, it is clear, if we compare these
groups, that the moral superiority belongs to the older one.
It is true that there are " highly objectionable" persons in the
Chaucerian catalogue, whose souls, to adopt the Pythagorean
faith, do not re-appear in fresh bodies in the later epoch as
represented by Addison and Steele ; but this is because that
epoch is not represented exhaustively. The Pardoner and
the Sompnour and the Friar were certainly " going to and
fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it " as busily
under the last of the Stuarts as under the last of the Plan-
tagenets, though they had altered their titles and employ-
ments ; but it did not fall within the plan of the great
essayists to depict them. Looking away from this matter of
moral superiority, which it may be truly said is due rather to
the difference between the ages than to that between the
writers, to the artistic merits of the two performances, it is
surely impossible to deny the palm to Chaucer as to the
deeper and wider genius. Addison conceived and incorpo-
rated one immortal figure. His sympathies scarcely ex-
tended at all beneath a certain social level. What are called
" the lower classes " hardly found a literary patron and intro-
ducer till Goldsmith arose. It was not unnecessarily that
Gray forbade " Grandeur " to
"hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor."
The noble declaration that Terence puts in the mouth of
Chremes —
** Homo sum ; humani nihil a me alienum puto,'*
CHAUCER AND SHAKESPEARE. 71
though often quoted by the wits of the last century, was seldom,
if ever, sincerely adopted and made the principle of action.
One infinite glory of Chaucer is the capacity of his moral,
no less than of his intellectual nature ; he is not the painter
of a class — his courtesy and interest know no such mean cir-
cumscription ; he makes friends with all his fellow pilgrims,
not only with those of his own rank and distinction as the
Knight and the Squire and the Prioress and the Man of
Law, but
** Schortly when the sonne was to reste
So hadde I spoken with her everychon^
That I was of here felawschipe anon.
And made forward eriy to aryse
To take oure waye ther as I yow devyse."
Defoe has created a man, the brave, resolute, self-con-
tained, invincible, but withal somewhat untender and dry-
natured Robinson Crusoe. About the middle of the last
century creative genius abounded. Richardson, Fielding,
Smollett, Sterne, and Goldsmith, all in various degrees
added to that spirit-born population that will be known and
familiar through all times. Generations will come and go,
but Squire Western, and Parson Adams, and Uncle Toby,
and Dr. Primrose will live on insensible of the weight of
years, still hale and vigorous, still moving all who approach
to laughter or to tears. Chaucer represents Nature regarding
with pride her handiwork, in the shape of the daughter of
*' the knight " Virginius, and speaking in this wise : —
"Lo, I, Nature
Thus can I forme and peynte a creature
Whan that me lust ; who can me counterfete ?
Pigmalion ? Nought, though he alwey forge and bete
Or grave or peynte ; for I dar wel sayn
Apellis, Zeuxis, schulde wirche in va)m
Other to grave, or pajmte, or forge or bete,
If they presumed me to counterfete.
ESSAYS AJfD jnjTES,
F<sr Hie rfiaf oi r&e FonnBr pfemopal
Ta fbone and p^nte (odidEr cicatfiMC
Rigfir as me InsL. AI tbing is ih. ni^ cme
Under die xmxBie xisas^ msEr wane and waxei
And fiar my iPQJce no dnng vol laae;
Xt ksd and I ben fizILr an accord ;
I madeliir to die »«w*a-fir||-i of mj Lofd;
So do I alLe myn odtio^ creatores
Wliat coloar dot they been, arw&nt figncs.'
It is to die reverence f<K Xzdire so findj expressed in this
passage that the success of the great Mastos is doe.
When that galaxy ^ided away just a centmy since, Nattire
found no ^dthfol and canning copyists for the space of a gene-
ration, for it was not Nature that Miss Barney and Mrs.
Ratclifie copied, but some &dse goddess whom they mistook
for her. And hence their men and women, however much
admired on their first appearance, socm sank into obscurity
when Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott began to write.
Then once more the mirror was held up to Nature, and
the reflected images caught and eternized with supremest
skill. Miss Austen is without a rival in the field she occu-
pied. In any of the highest creative ages Scott would
assuredly have taken an eminent place. But in compre-
hensiveness of power can either of these immortal artists be
ranked above Chaucer ? What we wish to emphasize is not
only the depth but the breadth of Chaucer's genius. It was
a mere fragment of human life that Miss Austen saw with a
clearness and an intelligence and a reproductive power that
defy panegyric.
Scott's canvas is more thickly and variously crowded ; it
is inexpressibly admirable both in quantity and in quality ;
but in our opinion it does not betoken a genius either so
wide-embracing or so deep-piercing as that of the old poet
CHAUCER AND SHAKESPEARE, 73
whom the author of Waverley himself studied with such
enthusiastic delight.
Passing on, now, to the second generation of novelists who
have graced and glorified this current century. Thackeray's
creative power was scarcely co-extensive with his humour, or
his sympathy. He mused and moralized more frequently
than he created. Like Hamlet, he was afflicted with a ten-
dency to think and reflect rather than to act. Dickens cer-
tainly possessed more abundant creative power. Beings
sprang up at. his call, as it was said the legions would arise
at the stamp of Pompey. And amongst these there are un-
doubtedly genuine specimens of the human race, who will
live for ever ; but he has left behind him scarcely anything
that is not marred by caricature. The mirror held up by
him to Nature was certainly not provided with a properly
even surface, and consequently all the images he saw in it,
and drew from it, were apt to be distorted and out of pro-
portion. He gives us at times a very masque of hobgoblins ;
one seems to have dropt into the country of
" The Anthropophagi and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders ; "
there is nothing normal or calm, but incessant eccentricity
and theatricalism. In this respect Dickens strikingly con-
trasts, to his disadvantage, with Chaucer, whose fidelity to
nature is far too sincere to permit him to take such liberties
with her fair works, or to select her monstrosities as her
types. Both writers are pre-eminently realistic ; no English-
men, perhaps, exhibit more clearly that intense realism which
it may be lies at the basis of the Low German mind, and
which produced that school of painting amongst our own
nearest kinsmen on the Continent which may compete with
photography in the minute accuracy and exactness of its
representations. Chaucer and Dickens are as precise in
F.%"/J3'
... .9 w J(
gear •yfrm'ariTig a tf^'rinst -l lie tad 'nMBH i ns as are Hooge
^e cinrmffcr 'jxAl of die Miller and
^ssr of Mr. Pickwick and Sam
n^rabe «»??*^^ tbe modem is not
v^uch Chaiicer never is.
becveen these two great
vas of the highest cul-
ture to be reachsd is hSs 2^ aad aH hb works are fragrant
wiih eiidence of i:. Dickesis ooakl hawe drawn certain of
the Pilgrims wirfa rfry-TTarTttr saccess : but he coold not have
drawn the Knight or the Ptioiess. Bat the difference is
not oniT of cakiire : it is also of soiL
Of what TD2J be tenned the third, the now reigning gene-
ration of novelists appertainii^ to diis centoiy, certainly the
only one that in point of characterizatk>n merits naming
with Chancer is that most accomplished and profound
writer known as Geoige Eliot ; of whom, as it is almost im-
possible to speak with undazzled judgment whilst we are
actually in the midst of his — or may we say her ? — ^fascina-
tions, we will not attempt any comparative review.
In our opinion, then, to Chaucer may worthily be assigned
the place next, we do not say close, to Shakespeare as a
maker of men. By no other writer, with that illustrious ex-
ception, have so many real fellow-creatures been given to
us ; by no other has been exhibited such wellnigh universal
knowledge and comprehension of mankind.
With regard to Chaucer, as to Shakespeare, it has been
disputed whether he is greater as a humorous or a pathetic
writer. It is a common observation that the gifts of humour
and pathos are generally found together, a statement that,
perhaps, requires some little qualification. Ben Jonson,
Addison, and Fielding, for instance, are humorous without
being pathetic ; on the other hand, Richardson is pathetic
CffA UCER AND SHAKESPEARE, 75
and not humorous. Sterne's pathos is a mere trick. Let
those who please weep by the death-bedside of Le Fevre ;
for our part we will not be so cheated of our tears. Sterne,
in that famous scene, is nothing better than an exquisite
" mute " — a masterpiece of mercenary mourning. One may
see him, if one looks intently, arranging his pocket-handker-
chief in effective folds, with one eye tear-streaming, while the
other watches that all the proper manoeuvres of woe are duly
executed. Flet nee dolet. And something of this is true of
Dickens. In the great masters of pathos our tears are not
drawn from us ; they flow of themselves. There is no de-
sign on the softness of our hearts, no insidious undermining,
no painful and elaborate besiegement. For writers to kill,
merely to melt their readers with a scene of tender emotion,
is unjustifiable manslaughter. There is, in short, nothmg to
be said for those whose delight it is with malice aforethought
to spread a feast of woe and serve up little children, or any
sweet human thing they can lay hands on, that their guests
may enjoy the luxury of tears. These are the Herods of
literature. Shakespeare never slays or butchers after this
fashion. He would have saved Cordelia if it had been in
his power ; but it was a moral necessity that she should die.
He could no more have kept alive and blooming the fair
flowers of the field when evil winds blew than preserved that
lovely form from perishing amidst the wild passions that
Lear's sad error had let loose. " Sin entered into the world,
and death by sin ; " and this death falls not only on the
guilty. Goneril and Regan perish ; and so the true daughter,
though with all our hearts we cry with the old "child-
changed" father, "Cordelia, stay a little." It cannot be
otherwise. And so always there is nothing arbitrary in the
pathetic scenes of the supreme artists. Of purely pathetic
writing there are, perhaps, no better specimens in all our
76 ESS A YS AND NOTES,
literature than the tales of the Clerk of Oxford and of the
Man of Law. Both poems aim at showing how the " meek
shall inherit the earth " — how true and genuine natures do
in the end triumph, however desperately defeated and crushed
they may for a time, or for many times, seem to be. Chaucer
weeps himself, or grows, indeed, something impatient, as he
conducts his heroines along their most sad course. The
thorns of the way pierce his feet also ; and he would fain
uproot them, and scatter soft flowers for the treading of his
woeful wayfarers. But he knew well that all pilgrimages
were not as easy as that one he sings of to Canterbury, that
was lightened with stories and jests ; but that certain spirits
must go on in darkness and weariness, with aching limbs and
breaking hearts, through much tribulation. In both works,
perhaps, surveyed from the purely aesthetic point of view,
there is an excess of woeful incident ; the bitter cup which
Constance and Griselda have to drain seems too large for
mortal lips. In this regard we must remember that both
these tales, though inserted into the grand work of Chaucer's
maturity, yet were certainly written in his youth. The Man
of Law, in his Prologue, gives us to understand that the tale
he proposes to narrate was written by Chaucer, of whose
writings he speaks, both expressly and fully, in that highly
interesting and important passage " of olde time." A
careful study of the Clerk^s Tale undoubtedly demonstrates
that it, too, was an earlier production. In both cases, so
far as the mere facts go, Chaucer closely follows his authori-
ties, much after the manner of Shakespeare. In the latter
case the closeness — Petrarch's well-known letter to Boccaccio
is the authority — is so strict that Chaucer is compelled to
speak for himself in an envoy at the conclusion. Perhaps the
most pathetic passage in Chaucer's later writings is in the
Knighfs Tale, which also, however, was first written before
CHA UCER AND SHAKESPEARE. 77
the noon of his genius. This passage is, of course, the death
ofArcite. The event is necessary/ Arcite had been untrue
to that solemnest of the pacts of chivalry — to the pact of
sworn brotherhood (see especially Palamon's words to him
in w. 271-293, and the quibble with which the other palli-
ates his conduct, w. 295-303) ; and Arcite must die. His
triumph in the lists had been but as the flourishing of a green
bay-tree. The final scene is described with the utmost sim-
plicity. The evil spirits that ought never to have found a
harbour in his heart have at last been expelled from it, and
the old fealty has returned ; and the last words of his speech
to Emily, whom he has bade take him softly in her ** armes
twaye " " for love of God," and hearken what he says, are a
generous commendation of his rival : —
" I have heer with my cosyn Palomon
Had stryf and rancour many a day i-gon
For love of yow, and eek for jelousie.
And Jupiter so wis my sowle gye,
To speken of a servaunt proprely
With alle circumstaunces trewely,
That is to seyn, truthe, honour, and knighthede,
Wysdom, humblesse, astaat, and hye kinrede,
Fredam, and al that longeth to that art,
So Jupiter have of my soule part,
As in this world right now ne knowe I non
So worthy to be loved as Palomon,
That serveth you, and wol do al his lyf.
And if that ye schul ever be a wjrf.
Forget not Palomon, that gentil man."
Assuredly Chaucer was endowed in a very high degree with
what we may call the pathetic sense. It would seem to have
been a favourite truth with him that
* Prof. Ebert is of opinion that Chaucer's grasp of the moral inten-
tion of the KnigMs Tale is less vigorous and firm than that of Boccaccio,
and it may be so.
78 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
" Pite renneth sone in gentil herte." ^
It ran " sone " and abundantly in his own most tender bosom.
But he is never merely sentimental or maudlin. We can
believe that the Levite of the Parable shed a tear or two as
he crossed over to the " other side " from where that robbed
and wounded traveller lay, and perhaps subsequently drew a
moving picture of the sad spectacle he had so carefully
avoided. Chaucer's pity is of no such quality. It springs
from the depths of his nature; nay, from the depths of
Nature herself moving in and through her interpreter.
Another respect in which Chaucer is not unworthy of
some comparison with his greater successor is his irony.
We use the word in the sense in which Dr. Thirlwall uses it
of Sophocles in his excellent paper printed in the Philo-
logical Museum some forty years ago, and in which Schlegel,
in his Lectures on Dramatic Literature^ uses it of Shake-
speare, to denote that dissembling, so to speak, that self-
retention and reticence, or, at least, indirect presentment,
that is a frequent characteristic of the consummate dramatist,
or the consummate writer of any kind who aims at portray-
ing life in all its breadth. We are told often enough of the
universal sympathy that inspires the greatest souls, and it is
well ; but let us consider that universal sympathy does not
mean blind, undiscriminating, wholesale sympathy, but pre-
cisely the opposite. Only that sympathy can be all-inclusive
that is profoundly intelligent as well as intense ; and this
profound intelligence is incompatible with any complete and
unmitigated adoration. The eyes that scrutinize the world
most keenly, though they may see infinite noblenesses that
escape a coarser vision, yet certainly see also much meanness
* This line occurs in several of his poems — in the Knighfs Tale and
in the Legend of Good Women^ &c.
CHA UCER AND SHAKESPEARE, 79
and pravity. Hence, to speak generally, for exceptions do
not concern us, there is no such thing amongst the deep-
seeing and really man-leamed as unqualified and absolute
admiration. And thus the supremest writers have no heroes
in the ordinary acceptation of that term. There is not a hero
in all Shakespeare ; not even Harry the Fifth is absolutely
so. For a like reason, there is no quite perfect villain.
Neither monsters of perfection nor of imperfection find
favour with those that really know mankind. Thus a real
master never completely identifies himself with any one of
his characters. To say that he does so is merely a fa^on de
parler. They are all his children, and it cannot but be that
some are dearer to him than others, but not one, if he is wise,
is an idol unto him. His irony consists in the earnest, heart-
felt, profound representation of them, while yet he is fully
alive to their failings and failures. It is observable only in
the supremest geniuses. Men of inferior knowledge and
dimmer light are more easily satisfied. They make golden
images for themselves and fall down and worship them.
Shakespeare stands outside each one of his plays, a little
apart and above the fervent figures that move in them, like
some Homeric god that from the skies watches the furious
struggle, whose issue is irreversibly ordered by Moipa
xparai^ — that cannot save Sarpedon or prolong the days of
Achilles. Chaucer, too, in a similar way abounds in secon-
dary meanings. What he teaches does not lie on the sur-
face. He never resigns his judgment or ceases to be a free
agent in honour of any of the characters he draws. He never
turns fanatic. He hates without bigotry ; he loves without
folly ; he worships without idolatry. This excellent temper
of his mind displays itself strikingly in the Prologue, which,
with all its ardour, is wholly free from extravagance or self-
abandonment
r>»
8o ESS A YS AND NOTES.
It is because his spirit enjoyed and retained this lofty
freedom that it was so tolerant and capacious. He, like
Shakespeare, was eminently a Human Catholic, no mere
sectary. He refused to no man an acknowledgment of
kindred ; for him there were no poor relations whom he for-
bade his house, or neighbours so fallen and debased that in
their faces the image of God in which man was made was
wholly obliterated. And it is because his understanding is
thus wide and deep, and his sympathies commensurate with
that understanding, that his ethical teaching is, for all time,
sound and true. He is no formal or formulating moralist ;
he never adds his voice to the mere party cries of his day,
or concentrates his energies on any dogma. To speak of
him as a zealous religious reformer is ridiculous ; ^ far other
was his business. But yet he was a great moral teacher, one
of our greatest — ^xbt dfivfiova llriXdava, All the world's a
school, if we may adapt Jaques' words, and all the men and
women merely school-children. Chaucer is a teacher in this
great world-school, and in no lesser or special seminary ;
and the lessons he gives are " exceeding broad." They are
such as life itself gives. They breathe out of his works in a
natural stream, no mere accidents, but the essential spirit of
them, to be discovered not by the labels but in the works
themselves : —
*' Oh ! to what uses shall we put
The wildweed-flower that simply blows ?
And is there any moral shut
Within the bosom of the rose ?
** But any man that walks the mead,
In bud, or blade, or bloom may find,
* Chaucer was just as much of a Lollard as Shakespeare was of a
Puritan. A recent writer has, we believe, demonstrated — to his own
satisfaction — that Shakespeare was the latter. Certainly he was no
Anti-Puritan ; nor was Chaucer an Anti-Wicliffite.
CHA UCER AND SHAKESPEARE. %i
According as his hmnours lead,
A meanii^ suited toliis mind.
And liberal applications lie
In Art like Nature, dearest friend ;
So 'twere to cramp its use, if I
Should hook it to some useful end."
•
There is just one point of personal likeness between
Chaucer and Shakespeare that we wish to notice. Of each
man, as his contemporaries knew him, the chief characteristic
was a wonderful lovableness of nature. The special epithet
bestowed on Shakespeare by the men of his day was not the
Wise, or the Witty, but the Gentle.^ Thus Ben Jonson, in
his lines " To the Memory of my Beloved the Author, Mr.
William Shakespeare, and what he has left us " — lines which
surely must have been forgotten by those critics, long since
routed by Gifford, who gave the great-hearted " Ben " so
little credit for generosity and affection : —
" Yet must I not give Nature all ; thy Art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part."
And, after saying that —
"the father's fJEU^
Lives in his issue,'
he apostrophized the " Sweet Swan of Avon." Again, in his
lines prefixed to the portrait of the 1623 folio, he speaks
of " The gentle Shakespeare." In his Timber, he writes —
" I loved the man, on this side idolatry, as much as any.
He was indeed honest, and of an open and free nature," &c.
That Chaucer inspired a similar affection and love appears
^ One cannot but remember here the cI^koXo^ , by which Aristophanes
makes Dionysus describe Sophocles :
V tiiKoKoq fikv ivBaS\ tvKoKog $* licet.
Aristoph. Frogs, p. 82.
And might not Goethe be described by some such epithet ?
G
82 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
fixHn the waim-heaited language in whidi both Ocdeve and
Lydgate make mention of him. It 'is the language of real
attachment, kindled by no mere brilliancy of wit, but by a
kindly genial love-winning nature. Qcdere, when the
great poet had passed away, wails thus with an unwonted
fervour : —
**' O maistfr done and finder reva e nt
My maister Chancer, floore of eloqnenoe,
Mirroar of fmctnoos entendement,
O uiiiTersal fader in sdence.
Alias ! that thoa thyne excdlent prudence
In thy bedde mortalle mygfatest not bequethe ;
What eyleth dethe, alas I why wold he sle thee."
cc
Alias I my worthy maister honorable.
This londes verray tresoar and richesse,
Dethe by thy dethe hath harme iireperable
Unto us done."
* • • • •
" That combre-world that thee my maister slow —
Wolde I slayne were ! — dethe was to hastyfe
To renne on the and reve the thy life."
** O maister, maist^, God thy sonle reste !
)}
And so the verses of Lydgate, in his Troye-hook^ which
for the most part flow but dull and languidly, thrill with a
sincere emotion when he speaks of him, whom he, too, calls
his " dear master." The old "pantographer's" voice breaks,
so to say, as he names the loved name, and recalls that
vanished presence as he knew it, so sensitive, unexacting,
self-disparaging, so " charitable, and so pitous."
Did Shakespeare read the works of Chaucer ? This is of
course a question which has little or nothing to do with the
unanimity of their geniuses. Wordsworth was by no means
a poet of the Chaucerian type ; yet he tells us how •
CHAUCER AND SHAKESPEARE. 83
«c
B«side the pleasant Mill at Trompington
I laughed with Chaucer in the hawthorn shade :
Heard him, while birds were warbling, tell his tales
Of amorous passion. "
And he has reproduced three ^ Chaucerian pieces with a
reverent manner that contrasts forcibly with the freedom
with which Dryden and Pope handled the old master.
Neither is Tennyson a cognate spirit ; and yet A Dream of
Fair Women is an inspiration of the elder poet : —
** I read, before my eyelids dropt their shade
The Legend of Good Wanun^ long ago
Sung by the morning star of song, who made
His music heard below.
" Dan Chaucer^ the first warbler, whose sweet breath
Preluded those melodious bursts that fill
The spacious times of great Elizabeth
With sounds that echo still.
" And, for a while, the knowledge of his art
Held me above the subject, as strong gales
Hold swollen clouds from raining, tho* my heart,
. Brimfiil of those wild tales,
" Charged both mine eyes with tears."
And at last he dreams, as we know, of Iphigenia and Helen,
and the other disastrous or ill-starred beauties of bygone
ages.
This question of Shakespeare's knowledge of Chaucer has
as yet received ho proper attention whatever. Godwin, at
the beginning of this century, noticing "the high honour the
poem of Troyius and CryseydehsLS received in having been
made the foundation of one of the plays of Shakespear," re-
marked that " there seems to have been in this respect a
' The best authorities now incline to agree that the Cuckoo and
Nightingale is not the work of Chaucer.
84 ESSAYS AND NOTES.
sort of conspiracy in the commentators upon' Shakespear
against the glory of our old English bard." This " con-
spiracy " was perhaps scarcely deliberate ; it was rather a
mere concord of ignorance. Now that Chaucer is becoming
better known, signs of Shakespeare's familiarity with him are
occasionally discerned.^ But not yet, as we have said, has
this matter been properly investigated. Yet it is quite cer-
tain that there is much valuable illustration of the great
Elizabethan dramatist to be derived from the great Planta-
genet tale-teller.
Apart from any overt facts to be found in the works of
Shakespeare, would it not be incredible that he should not
have known the writings of the Highest preceding English
genius, especially when we consider what we have already
discussed — the profound congeniality that exists between the
two minds ? Would not " deep call unto deep " ?
When Shakespeare " came of age," the one great name of
English literature was Chaucer. Spenser had not yet put
forth all his strength. Wyatt, and Surrey, and Sackville
were but lesser lights. To Spenser and to Shakespeare,
looking back into the past, th,e one great prominent figure
was that of Chaucer. He bestrode the world of English
literature like a Colossus, and the Gowers, and Occleves,
and Lydgates, and Barclays, "petty men, walked under his
huge legs." It would be less difficult to believe that Virgil
did not know Ennius, than that Shakespeare did not know
Chaucer. English literature then without Chaucer would
be simply Hamlet without Hamlet. Shakespeare read the
Confessio Amantis, if Pericles * is in part at least his work,
' We are glad to see some illustrations from Chaucer are given in
Messrs. Clark and Wright's edition of Hamlet^ just published by the
University of Oxford.
* Oddly enough, the story of King Antiochus's incest which occupies
CHAUCER AND SHAKESPEARE. 8$
and it is not easy to deny it to be so in the face of the evi-
dence for connecting it with him. That he should read
Gower and ignore Chaucer would be as extraordinary as if
the coming great genius of the close of the twenty-first cen-
tury — whoever and whatever he is — should study his Tupper,
and let Browning grow mouldy on his shelf; or — not to go
too far into the future, although we have not a shadow of
doubt as to the verdict of posterity, unless, indeed, there
presently sets in a millenium of platitudes — as if the Brown-
ings and Tennysons of our own day should prize Kyd above
Shakespeare himself, or, to be quite definite, delight in the
perusal oijeronimo rather than oi Macbeth, Surely Chaucer's
language could be no insuperable barrier to Shakespeare's
acquaintance with him. It is, perhaps, slightly more obso-
lete than that of Gower ; but it is only slightly so.
Chaucer was accessible. Editions of him were published
in 1542, 1546, 1555, and 1598.
It may be well, perhaps, before proceeding any further, to
notice a little more fully how predominant was the fame of
Chaucer in the latter half of the sixteenth century. The
'best collection of commemorations of him yet made is that
prefixed to Urry^s edition of his works ; but even that is ex-
tremely meagre. It would not be difficult to collect Chau-
cerian tribute from Latimer, Ascham, and others of the age
inmiediately preceding the age of Shakespeare. But it is
more important to show that such tribute was voluntarily
paid by the very circle in which Shakespeare himself
moved, or with whose works he could not but have been
familiar. There is every probability that Shakespeare knew
)>
the first part of Pericles^ is especially reprobated by the ''Man of Law
in his Prologue, as one that Chaucer would in no wise tell. Chaucer
evidently thinks that he whom he himself calls " the moral Gower *'
shook! have known better than to meddle with it.
S6 ESSAYS AND NOTES.
Spenser personally ; one can scarcely doubt that they met,
during Spenser's London visits, at the house of the Earl of
Essex, the close friend of the Eari of Southampton ; for *
Lord Essex was an intimate friend of Spenser's, and the love
Shakespeare " dedicated " to Lord Southampton was " with-
out end" Ben Jonson, Daniel, Drayton, Fletcher, were
amongst Shakespeare's closest friends, according to tradi-
tions of value, as well as amongst his most eminent contem-
poraries. Now, all these five great poets confess, in one
way or another, their knowledge and admiration of Chaucer.
Spenser, in his Shefherdes Calendar, in his Faerie Queene, in
his View of the Present State of Ireland, either refers to or
expressly mentions him ; in Mother Hubberds Tale he essays
his manner, with such success as might be expected. Most
noticeable is the passage in the last book of the Shepherdes
Calendar, which tells us Colin, that is, himself —
" Wei could pype and singe,
For he of Tityrus his songs did lere " —
that Tityrus was Chaucer we know on the authority, if any
authority is wanted, of his friend and annotator, Edward
Kirke — and the passages in the Faerie Queene, in which he
gives full voice to his delight and love. One is the well-
known canto (the second of book iv.), in which, not without
fear and trembling and a cry for pardon, he sets himself to
conclude the " half-told " " story of Cambuscan bold ; " in
the other, not so generally noticed, which occurs in one of
the fragments of book vii., he speaks of —
" Old Dan Geflfrey, in whose gentle spright
The pure well-head of Poesie did dwell."
There can be no 'doubt that the antique cast of Spenser's
language is mainly attributable to Chaucer's influence. To
him the language of Chaucer seemed to be the proper Ian-
CHAUCER AND SHAKESPEARE. 87
gaage of poetry. As the grammarian, L. ^Elius Stilo, fe said
to have declared that had the Muses written Latin, they
would have adopted the dialect of Plautus, so Spenser held
that^ had they spoken the English tongue, they would have
modelled themselves on Chaucer. To Ben Jonson, Chaucer
was the chief English classic of the older rime ; see his
Grammary passim. Daniel, in his Musophilus — ^a poem full
of fine thought and fluent expression '* containing a general
defence of learning" — ^grieving to think that a time may
be coming when Chaucer may fall out of remembrance —
speaks with high enthusiasm of the triumphs he has already
won: —
** Yet what a time hatfi he wrested from time,
And won upon the mighty waste of days
Unto th* immortal honour of our clime
That by his means came first adorned with bays ?
Unto the sacred relics of whose time,*
We yet are bound in zeal to oflfer praise."
Then follows a curious general prophecy,* that, in fact,
precisely applies to Chaucer. It anticipates that revival of
which we have spoken in the beginning of this paper : —
"the stronger constitutions shall
Wear out th* infection of distempered days.
And come with glory to outlive this &11
Recc^ring of another spring ofpraisey
* For time in this line we should, perhaps, read rime^ or rhyme^ as
we corruptly spell the word.
' There is another striking prophecy, an imagined possibility, in this
poem. • It relates to the spread of the language : —
"And who in time knows whither we may vent
The treasure of our tongue ? To what strange shores
This gain of our best glory shall be sent
T* enrich unknowing nations with our stores ?
What worlds in th* yet unformed Occident
May come refin'd with th* accents that are ours.*'
88 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
* Clear'd from th* oppressing humours wherewithal
The idle multitude surchaiige their lays."
Drayton, in his epistle To my dearly-laved friend^ Henry
Reynolds^ Esq., of Poets and Poesy — a survey, of singular in-
terest for us now, of the poetry of his day, preceded by a
rapid retrospect — begins his splendid catalogue with the
name of Chaucer : —
•* That noble Chaucer in those former times
The first enrichVi our English with his rhymes.
And was the first of ours that ever brake ,
Into the Muses* treasure, and first spake
In weighty numbers, delving in the mine
Of perfect knowledge, which he could refine.
And coin for current, and as much as then
The Ei^lish language could express to men.
He made it do ; and by his wondrous skill
Gave us much light from his abundant quill. **
Still more interesting in connection with our special topic
is the Prologue of the Two Noble Kinsmeny a play, as is well
known, founded on the Knights Tale, mainly written by
Fletcher, but in whose composition it seems highly probable
Shakespeare himself took some part. Says the Prologue of
the play it introduces : —
•* It has a noble breeder, and a pure,
A learned, and a poet never went
More famous yet 'twixt Po and silver Trent.
Chaucer, admired of all, the story gives ;
There constant to eternity it lives !
If we let fall the nobleness of this.
And the first sound this child hear be a hiss.
How will it shake the bones of that good man.
And make him cry from underground : ' Oh ! fan
From me the witless chaff of such a writer
That blasts my bays, and my famed works makes lighter
Than Robin Hood.* This is the fear we bring ;
For, to say truth, it were an endless thing .
I
CBAUCER AND SHAKESPEARE.
And loo ambitiouE, to nspire Id him,
Weak as we 3Xt, and almost breathless swim
In Ihis deep water. Do but you hold out
Your helping hands, and we will tack about
And something do Co save us ; yoQ shall hear
Scenes, though below his art, may yet appear
Worth two hours' travel. To bis bones sweet sleep !
It would be easy to mulriply these praises of Chaucer, did
the limits of our space allow us ; but surely me have quoted
enough to show what an object of real veneration and love
tlie old poet was in Shakespeare's time, and how sincere and
earnest celebrations of him must have perpetually sounded
in Shakespeare's ears. A priori, therefore, it might have
been concluded that Shakespeare was familiar with the
greatest English pieces of characterization, and humour, and
pathos, that had appeared before him. But we need not
rest content with an inference. If we turn lo the plays them-
selves, we have abundant evidence of that familiarity.
Chaucer, it is true, is not represented in the picture Shake-
speare gives of Chaucer's age, in his plays of Richard the
Second and Henry the Fourth. FaJstafT, it seems, was on
sp>eaking and jesting terms with John of Gaunt, who was
Chaucer's great friend and patron, "John a Gaunt," as we
learn, had once " burst " Shallow's head, and Falstaff had
told him he had beaten his own name. But we see no
Chaucer in the retinue of " lime-honoured Lancaster." He
is not by any means, however, conspicuous by hts absence,
any more than Lydgale in Henry the Fifth, or Skelton and
Surrey in Hairy the Eighth. Indeed, known in the Eliza-
bethan age only as a poet, and not as a diplomatist or a
politician, he would have seemed something out of place in
a " History," when all the interest centres on the throne and
its occupants; for Shakespeare's " Histories" do not aim at
90 £SSA YS AND NOTES.
giving complete descriptions of the times with which they
deal. They are regal rather than national pieces. In that
very play of Richard the Second we hear nothing of Wat
Tyler ; just as in King John we hear nothing of Magna Charta,
It must also be noted that there was much material com-
mon to the times both of Chaucer and Shakespeate, which
both have used. There were common authors, as Ovid, and
common legends. With regard to the Romances of Chivalry,
it is striking to notice how both poets declined to use them.
Chaucer's taste anticipated the taste of Shakespeare. And
so with regard to allegory. Chaucer soon outgrew that form
of writing, so fashionable in his age ; Shakespeare scarcely
ever adopted it, for he does not seem to have cared to write
masques.^ It would seem contrariwise that many things
attracted them. both. They both tell the story of Lucretia
— Chaucer in his Legend of Good Women, following Ovid,
Shakespeare in his Tarquin and Lucrece, partly under the
influence, as we shall see, of a quite different work of
Chaucer's. Chaucer briefly recounts the fall of Julius Caesar
in his Monkes Tale, as Shakespeare so splendidly in his great
play, both committing an error as to the scene, which they
make the Capitol (so Polonius in Hamlet) \ both portray
the tragic ends of Pyramus and Thisbe, in the Legend of
Good Women and the Midsummer Nighfs Dream respec-
tively, Chaucer translating Ovid with all submission, Shake-
speare giving his humour, free play at a story, which is absurd
enough, notably in the matter of that cracked wall, if one
^ Neither poet had any liking for profuse alliteration ; see the
"Parson's"
"Trusteth wel, I am a Suthem man,
I cannot geste nmi raf ruf by the letter : "
and Shakespeare's ridicule in the Midsummer Nighfs Dream, v. t, and
Lov^s Labour's Lost^ iv. 2.
CHAUCER AND SHAKESPEARE. 91
lets one's self realize it. Cleopatra is another of the Saints
of Cupid in the Legend already twice mentioned, as she is
also a famous Shakespearian '* person ; " both Chaucer and
Shakespeare holding a far too favourable opinion of her
lover, whom the former describes
"a fill worthy gentil werreyour."
Dido, Ariadne, Medea, Philomela, are well-known figures to
both, though only the older poet, who, as living in the first
glimmering of the Renaissance, lay humbly at the feet of
the author of the HeroideSy honours them with special
celebrations.
The true power of Chaucer is not displayed in any one of
the pieces just mentioned ; for of the Saints Legend of Cupid,
as the Man of Law intitules it, undoubtedly the most valu-
able part is the Prologue; and as for the Monies Tale, we
weary of it, even as the Knight, with all his courtesy, wearied,
and half agree with the free-spoken host — the very " able "
chairman of the Pilgrim party —
*' Such talkyng is nought worth a boterflye,
For therinne is noon disport ne game.*'
Certainly not in Shakespeare's treatment of the just-men-
tioned stories is his knowledge of Chaucer, or Chaucer's
influence upon him, obviously manifested. The two works
of Chaucer which evidently attracted Shakespeare most
were The Knighfs Tale and Troylus and Cryseyde ; and the
tokens of this attraction are to be seen in the Midsummer
Nighfs Dream and in The Two Noble Kinsmen, in Venus
and Adonis, Tarquin and Lucrece, Troilus and Cressida, and
Romeo and Juliet, The Cokes Tale of Gamely n, as every-
body has long agreed, is not by Chaucer ; but in the Eliza-
bethan age it was believed to be so. Shakespeare was cer-
tainly acquainted with it, as well as with the prose version
92 £SSA YS AND NOTES,
of it incorporated in 'LxAg^^ Rosalynd^ the source oiAs You
Like It Besides these connections, there are scattered
throughout Shakespeare's plays and poems various other
indications that the writings of Chaucer were anything but
a sealed or an unopened book to him.
To mention a few of these latter echoes : the Man of Law,
as fre have mentioned, names The Legend of Good Women,
The Seintes Legende of Cupid, and Chaucer, in the Latin
heading of the various parts of the Legend, styles each
heroine " a martyr." Compare Pericles i. i, where Antiochus
describes the fallen suitors of his daughter as
'* martyrs, slain in Cupid's wars ; "
and the Princess's Saint Denis to Saint Cupid, in Lav^s
Labouf^s Lost, v. 2. '
Compare The Assembly of Foules —
'* And brekers of the law, soth for to saine.
And likerous folk, after that they been dede,
Shal whirle about the world alway in paine.
Til many a world be passed, out of drede," &c.
with Claudius's —
**To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world." — Measure for Measure, iii. I.
Again, compare from the same poem —
** The wery hunter slep)mge in hys bed.
To woode ayeine hys mynde gooth anoon ;
The juge dremeth how hys plees ben sped ;
The cartar dremeth how his cartes goone ;
The ryche of golde, the knyght fyght with his fone ;
The seke meteth he drynketh of the tonne ;
The lover meteth he hath hys lady wonne,"
with that marvellously brilliant speech of Mercutio, of Queen
Mab's doings :—
CHAUCER AND SHAKESPEARE. 93
" She gallops night, by night
Through lovers* brains, and then they dream of love : "
* * « « •
" O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees : "
* « * * *
" Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck," &c*
Compare Legende of Good Wemeny Prologue —
" My worde, my werkes, ys knyt so in youre bonde
That as an harpe obeieth to the honde
That makith it soune after his fyngerynge,
Ryght so mowe ye oute of myne herte bringe
Swich vois, ryght as yow list, to laughe and pleyne,"
with Hamlet's rebuke of those unfortunate catspaws, Rosen-
crantz and Guildenstern : —
" Hamlet Will you play upon this pipe ?
Guil, My lord, I cannot
Hamlet, I pray you.
GuiL Believe me, I cannot.
Hamlet, I do beseech you.
Guil. I know no touch of it, my lord.
Hamlet, *Tis as easy as Ijring. Govern these ventages with your
finger and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse
most eloquent music Look you, these are the stops.
Guil, But these cannot I conmiand to any utterance of harmony ;
I have not the skilL
^ Comp. Lucretius, iv. 965 et seq, : —
'• In somnis eadem plerumque videmus obire ;
Causidici causas agere et componere leges,
Induperatores pugnare ac proelia obire,
Nautse contractum cum ventis degere bellum,
Nos agere hoc autem et naturam quaerere rerum
Semper et inventam patriis exponere chartis,"
and infra, loi i et seq, : —
" Porro hominum mentes, magnis qui mentibus edunt
Magna, itidem ssepe in somnis faciuntque geruntque ;
R^es expugnant, capiuntur, proelia miscent,
Tollunt clamorem, quasi si jugulentur ibidem," &c.
94 ESS A YS AND NOTES.
Hamlet, Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of
me I You would play upon me ; you would seem to know my stops ;
you would pluck out the heart of my mystery ; you would sound me
from my lowest note to the top of my compass ; and there is much
music, excellent voice in this little organ ; yet cannot you make it
speak. 'S blood ! do you think I am easier to be played on than a
pipe ? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet
you cannot play upon me."
And also with what he says to Horatio—
" Blest are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled.
That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger
To sound yrhat stop she please."
Compare, ibid,, —
** For love shal me yeve strength'e and hard3messe.
To make my wounde large ynogh, I gesse,"
with Mercutio, of his own fatal hurt —
** No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door ; but
'tis enough ; 'twill serve. Ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find
me a grave man."
The only Canterbury pilgrims, perhaps, that have been
present to Shakespeare's mind, on its days of creation, are
the Host and the Sompnour. The resemblance between
mine host of the " Tabard " and mine host of the " Garter "
has often been pointed out, as also that between the physique
of the Sompnour and " one Bardolph, if your majesty know
the man : his face is all bubukles, and whelks, and knobs,
and flames of fire." That there should not be other per-
sonal parallels besides that between the landlords arises
partly from the different principles on which the two geniuses
worked. Shakespeare did not attempt to reproduce the
society of his time fully and exactly as did Chaucer. It
would be easier to find counterparts to Chaucer's charac-
ters in Ben Jonson, the great collector and preserver of
CHAUCER AND SHAKESPEARE. 95
"humours." That difference in ^^ persona " arises also from
the immense change that passed over English life between
the fourteenth and the sixteenth century. The social world
has its deluges no less than the material —
" O earth 1 what changes hast thou seen ! ''
and the interval between those centuries was a "diluvial
period." The old forms of life had been swept away. The
" wanton and merry " friar, the " full fat " lordly monk, the
smooth-tongued pardoner, and many another, had all gone
hence, and were no more seen ; and a race had succeeded
that knew not St. Thomas or his fellow-saints.
Of Shakespeare's knowledge of the Knighfs Tale there are
several indications in the Midsummer Nighfs Dream} In
both pieces the presiding figures are those of "Duke"
Theseus and Hippolyta ; the scenes are Athens and woods
near Athens. The name Philostrate is common to both —
in the older, work as the name worn by Arcite when he
returns disguised to the court of Theseus, in the later as that
of the Master of the Revels to Theseus. The poem begins
just after the marriage of Theseus. The conqueror of " the
regne of Femynge" is just bringing his bride
'' hoom with him in his contre,
With moche glorie and gret solempnite.**-
In the play he has just brought her home, to be wedded
there
"With pomp, with triumph, and with revelling.**
It is impossible when, later on in the tale, we see Theseus and
Hippoljrta, out a hunting in the May time, come upon Pala-
mon and Arcite, madly fighting for love in a forest glade, not
* See !k>me excellent rem^ks on this point in Hippesley's Chapters
an Early English LifenUurt^^p]^, 6o-62.
96 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
to remember how in the pky the same noble pair, " hearing
the music" of the hounds, discover a group of lovers
strangely reposing on the woodland grass, having risen up
early, as the Duke thinks, " to observe the rite of May," all
rivalry, as the event proves, now appeased and ended. In
both pieces we have two lovers devoted to one lady. In the
play this position is repeated twice. But still closer is the
contact between Shakespeare and the Knighfs Tale^ if, as is
stated in the edition of the Two Noble Kinsmen^ published
in 1634, that work is indeed ** by the memorable worthies of
their own time, Mr. John Fletcher and Mr. William Shak-
speare ; " for the Two Noble Kinsmen is, in fact, a dramati-
zation of the Knighfs Tale, The statement of the title-page
might go for little, if it were not supplemented by internal
evidence. For our part we are inclined to agree with those
critics who recognize the direct work of Shakespeare in cer-
tain passages of the drama and imitations of him in other
parts. The subsidiary plot of the gaoler's daughter and her
furious passion for Palamon is certainly not by the hand of
the master. The madness scene would appear to have been
suggested by Ophelia's frenzy. Gerrold and his rustic
merrymakers seem a faint reflection of the incomparable
Bottom and his company. The scenes which are assuredly
Shakespeare's, if any are, are those which confine themselves
to the story as rendered by Chaucer, expanding or contract-
ing it as is required by dramatic necessity and the judgment
of the reproducer. They are, without controversy, the work
of one who held his original in no mean honour. The
warmly admiring and reverent mention of its author, made
in the Prologue, has already been quoted.
But the work of Chaucer's whose traces are most frequently
perceptible in Shakespeare's writings, is unquestionably
Troilus and Cressida, Troilus and Cressida i^2& \ki<^ most
CHAVCER and SHAKESPEARE. 97
•
popular love-poem of our literature, from the time of its
composition, or free and vigorous reproduction from Boc-
caccio. In the fifteenth century a Scotch poet, ty name
Henryson, wrote a continuation of it^ Sixteenth-century
praises of it abound. " Chaucer," says Sidney, in his Apo-
logic for' Poetrie^ " undoubtedly did excellently in hys Troy-
lus and Cre3sid; of whom truly I know not whether to mer-
vaile more either that he in that mistie time could see so
clearely, or that wee in this cleare age walke so stumblingly
after him." •
Shakespeare's acquaintance with this general favourite is,
in our opinion, exhibited, as we have saidj most strikiYigly in
his play of the same name, in Romeo and Juliet^ in Tarqutn
and Lticrece^ and in Venus and Adonis ; but in others of his
works also there may perhaps be discerned symptoms of it.
Compare —
** For hit is seyd men makyn oft a yerd
With which the maker is himself ybeten
In sundry maner as thes wise men tretyn,*'
with King jLear : —
(C
Compart
The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to scourge us."
** What know I of the queene Niobe ?
Let be thin old ensaumplis, I the pray."
with Hamlet's —
t " What is Hecmba to him, or he to Hecuba ? "
* From the "Cressida was a beggar" of Tkvelfth Night (iii. i), it
would appear that Shakespeare knew this continuation.
* See p. 62 of Mr. Arber*s reprint. Is Mr. Arber*s excellent series
of reprints generally known to our readers ? It is not easy to commend
them too warmly for their accuracy and their cheapness.
H
• 98 ESSAYS AND NOTES,
In the Merchant of Venice, in that famous " out-nighting "
scene, Lorenzo says. how —
"in such a night
Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls,
And sigh'd his soul toward the Grecian tents,
Where Cressid lay that night."
This is straight from Chaucer, who describes the poor forlorn
lover, how —
" Upon the walles fast ek wolde he walke,
And on the Grekes oost he wolde see :
And to h)rmself right thus he wolde talke :
So yonder is myn owene lady free,
Or elles yonder, ther the tentes be, .
And thennes cometh this eyre that is so soote.
That in my soule I feele it doth me boote.
** And hardyly this wynd that moore and moore
Thus stoundemele encressith in my face.
Is of my lady depe sykes sore ;
I preve it thus, for in noon" other place
Of all this town, save oonly in this space,
^ * Feel I no wynde that souneth so lyke pe5nie.
It seith * Alias ! why twynned be we tweyne ?
» »>
But, to turn to the pieces above mentioned as more espe-
cially reflecting the knowledge of Chaucer's poem : it is in
Venus and AdoniSy " the first heir of my invention," as might
be expected, that the influence of Chaucer's manner is most
visible. We venture to think that Chaucer is the master of
Shakespeare in undramatic as Marlowe in dramatic poetry.
In both poetries the style of the teacher has left its mark at
least upon the earlier productions of the pupil. The. lead-
ing features of Chaucer's Troylus and Cryseyde are, an ex-
treme minuteness and fulness of description, an over-brim-
ming abundance of imagery and illustration, an almost
excessive display of poetical richness and power. In all
these, respects the Venus and Adonis of Shakespeare corre-
CHAUCER AND SHAKESPEARE. 99
•
sponds. There are signs of youthfulness in both worlcs —
the youthfulness of singularly deep and fertile natures. ' In
. each poem there is but little action. Each writer is encum-
bered, so to speak, by the wealth of his genius, so that
m6vement is almost impossible. The exuberant growths of
fancy cling around them trammellingly. The poems consist
' for the most part of long conversations, or else monologues
reported at the fullest length. They are the thinkings' aloud
of minds of the utmost conceivable fulness and efflorescence.
The passion depicted in both pieces is of the same sensuous
order. The likeness in this respect is extremely noticeable.
. Something of what has been said applies also to Tarquin
and Lucrece^ but not all. The style of that work is severer
than that of Venus and Adonis^ though there is the same in-
exhaustible plenitude and lavishness of power. In one point
of view it affords a remarkable contrast to the poem pub-
lished in the preceding year. The chaste-souled Lucrece
seems to rebuke the self-abandoning passion of Venus, as
also that of the old Trojan paramours. The structure of the
poem does not differ from that of Venus and Adonis^ which,
as we have pointed out, is that of the Chaucerian work. It
is not perhaps so important to notice that the metre of it is
the same as that of Chaucer's poem — the seven-lined stanza
or "rime royal," as it is called (which we in England
might rather call the Chaucerian stanza ; for it is to Chaucer
we owe as well its introduction into our country as its most
successful cultivation) — inasmuch as it is the metre of the
Mirrour of Magistrates arid other Tudor works ; but yet the
fact should not be forgotten.
In the great love-play, Romeo and Juliet^ there are to be
observed many reminiscences of the great love-tale, Troylus
and Cryseyde, Mercutio,* the love-mocker, recalls to the
^ Compare also Kenedick in Much Ado about Nothing,
100 ESSAYS AND NOTES.
mind of the reader what Troilus was before the hour of his
sweet captivity came upon him, Pandarus reminds the
smitten knight, how —
" thou jvere wont to chace
At tx)ve in scorne, and for despyt hym calle
Seynt Idiote, Lord of thes folis alle.
" How oft hast thou made thy nice japis
And seyd that Loves servauntis everichon
Of nycete ben verrey goddis apys ;
And some wold monche her brede alone,
Lying in bed, and make hem for to grone ;
And some thow seydist had a blaunch fevere,
And preydist God he shold never kevere, •
** And some of hem toke on hem for the cold.
More than ynow, so seydist thow fill oft ;
And some have feynid oft t)niie and told
How they wake, whan her love slepe soft
And thus have broght hem self a Joft,
And natheles were undere at the last ;
Thus seydist thow, and japedist ful fast."
Compare Mercutio's name of " the ape " for Romeo, and
his other lively wit-flights at the expense of the " tender
passion." Compare Cryseyde's
** Ful sharp bygynnyng brekith oft at ende,"
with Friar Laurence's sage-^
** These violent delights have violent ends,
And in their triumph die."
Compare the partings of the lovers as the day breaks (book
iii. of Troilus and Cressida ; act iii. scene 5, of Romeo and
Juliet)} Compare Troilus's presentiment —
^ Thi^ parallel is pointed out by Godwin in his Life of Geoffrey
Chaucer,
CHAUCER AND SHAKESPEARE. loi
" Alas ! thow saist right soth, quoth Troylus ;
But, hardely, it is not al for nought,
That in myn herte I now rejoysse thus ;
It is ayenis some good, I have a thought ;
Not I not how, but sen that I was wrought,
Ne felt I swich a comfort, dar I seye ;
She comth to nyght, my life that dorste I leye,**
with Romeo's —
" If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep.
My dreams presage some joyful news at hand ;
My bosom's lord sits lightly in his throne.
And all this day an unaccustomed spirit
• Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts."
But it is most natural to look for signs of Shakespeare's
knowledge of Chaucer's Troylus and Cryseyde in his play of
the same name ; and certainly signs are there, but they are
signs of a dissentient knowledge rather than of a sympathetic.
It dan scarcely, we think, be necessary for us, after what has*
already been said, to insist that the commentators are im-
perfectly informed who tell us that * Shakespeare knew
nothing of Chaucer's poem, and that his only sources were
Caxton's Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye and Lydgate's
Hisiorye^ Sege, and Dystrtucyon of Troye, That he drew
from those works of Caxton and Lydgate, we do not deny ;
for his play covers a much wider field than that of Chaucer's
poem, and indeed the best parts of it have nothing to do
with the lovers ; but there can be no doubt that for those
scenes in which the eponyms do figure the older cefebrator
of them was his chief authority. Chaucer is the one original
in English for the story of Troilus and Cressida, His own
debt to Boccaccio is unquestionable ; who " Lollius " was, to
whom he acknowledges such perpetual obligations, is a yet
unsolved mystery ; but for English readers he is the one
original. . Thus Lydgate, in his Troy book, when he comes
I02 ESSAYS AND NOTES,
to Troilus and Cressida, at once cites Chaucer's poem as the
source of all he has to tell, and, after those sincere expres-
sions of reverence and love, to which we have referred above,
proceeds to reproduce it. And so Gascoigne,^ who died a
few years before Shakespeare left Stratford for London, when
he alludes to the story, names Lollius and Chaucer as the
great relaters of it. .
But Shakespeare does not accept the story in the spirit in
which Chaucer recounts it. Shakespeare's play by no means
belongs to his " apprenticeship," as Dryden makes bold to
state in the Preface to his own queer version of it ; it is, in
fact, one of his later plays. We should incline to hold that
Chaucer's poem belongs to about the same period of his life
as that to which Romeo and Juliet belongs in the life of
Shakespeare : it is the work of his genius when yet com-
paratively nascent, in no wise mellow fruit. Hence the
difference of treatment. Shakespeare's fully ripened judg-
ment rejects altogether a certain unreality that marks
Chaucer's poem. The fact is that the heroine, as the older
poet paints her, is a mere fancy-creature. * Chaucer's heart
was very soft towards women, and he could not harden it
enough to represent Cressida faithfully. He could- not bring
himself to call her by her right name ; he is always yearning
to excuse her ; even for what he does say he is afterwards
ready to make amends, and endeavours to make amends in
the Legend of Good Women, With all her frailty he loved
her tenderly, and would fain have been blind to her terrible
treason. He was like some executioner paralyzed by the
exceeding fairness of the head laid on the block before
him.
** Ne me ne list this sely womman chyde
Ferthere thanne the storie wol devyse ; '
* See Gascoigne's Dan Bartholomew of Bathe,
CHAUCER AND SHAKESPEARE, 103
Hire name, alias ! is published so wyde,
That for hire gilte it ought ynough suffise ;
And if I myght excuse hire any wyse,
For she so sory was for her untrouthe
Ywis I wold excuse hire yet for routheJ*
Shakespeare, on the other hand, more keen-sighted at all
times, and writing at a season of life when the eyes of the
wise, at least, are not so easily caught, and mere outward
beauty is rated and valued with a truer discrimination, does
justice inflexibly ; and when Nestor praises her, equivocally
perhaps as " a woman of quick sense," Ulysses cries aloud
and spares not : —
" Fie, fie upon her !
There's a language in her eye, her cheek, her lip,
Nay, her foot speaks ; her wanton spirits look out
At every joint and motive of her body." *
•
Quite different, too, are the representations of Pandarus.
Chaucer, though not perhaps without misjgivings, ascribes
his wonderful assiduity in his friend's behalf to the bond of
"sworn brotherhood," by which he and Troilus, just as
Palamon and Arcite, were so closely united ; Shakespeare
does not deign to notice any such plea. He is persistently
plain-spoken ; he lets black be black. It is then perhaps in
his pointed disagreements with Chaucer's poem that Shake-
speare's knowledge of it is manifested rather than in any
concordance of incident or expression, though most certainly
there is this concordance also.
Our space has not permitted us to attempt an exhaustive
list of the Chaucerian traces to be observed in the works of
Shakespeare. Perhaps of those we have quoted, some may
seem fanciful ; it is not essential to maintain our proposition
' that all should be admitted ; but assuredly they cannot all
be dismissed as unsubstantial pr fortuitous.
I04 ESSA YS AND NOTES,
There is, then, good ground for indulging the belief that
the works of the great narrative poet of our literature were
not absent from the studies of the supreme dramatist, who
alone, perhaps, of all greatest geniuses, was in certain gifts
of the imagination ever to surpass him.
SHAKESPEARes GREEK NAMES. 105
IV.
SHAKESPEARE'S GREEK NAMES..
(From the Comhill Magazine^ February, 1876.)
THE critics of the last century found a curious pleasure
in proving that Shakespeare was a dunce. It could
not be denied that there was something in him ; but there
was a general reluctance to allow that he knew anything of
books. That he could write was demonstrable, and that he
could read was beyond doubting ; but not much more was
allowed him in the way of accomplishments. Persons who
were not themselves acquainted with Italian, as was amply
proved by the blunders they committed in discussing the
matter, easily convinced themselves and their disciples that
Shakespeare was quite innocent of that language. ' And so
with regard to French, it was thought absurd to believe that
he had any knowledge of French ; though to be sure there
is in several of his plays an appearance of some knowledge
of it, Of all symptoms of such a knowledge it was not
difficult to dispose by the theory that he had a friend who
had enjoyed superior advantages, and could readily inform
him what was the equivalent for "finger " and " hand " and
so forth. As to Latin, the University men rather resented
the notion that he could read his Ovid \xx the original.
Shakespeare might have studied and interpreted nature with-
remarkable success ; but art and the great works of art were
out of his line. Certainly there were endless signs in his
writing that their author was possessed of some Latinity :
but what arguments are considerable when the case is pre-
io6 ESSAYS AND NOTES. ,
judged ? To entertain for a moment the idea that he was
in the slightest possible degree a Greek scholar would have
been held the mere wildness of phantasy. It was even
maintained that his knowledge of his native tongue was un-
sound and blundering. In all these respects the views of
Shakespearian criticism have materially changed. An un-
biassed inspection of the facts has produced a tendenjcy to
believe that Shakespeare was not after all such an utter
ignoramus. Scholars of note have found reasons for con-
cluding that he had some acquaintance with both Italian
and F.rench, and that 5en Jonson's famous line —
" And thojigh thou hadst small Latin and less Greek — "
is entirely decisive evidence that his attainments in what are
specially called the classical tongues were of an appreciable
amount, considering how high was the learned Ben's standard,
and what therefore his " small " would represent. As to
English, it has been made now fairly clear that if Shake-
speare knew nothing of that tongue, the whole Elizabethan
age was in a like condition ; as what were noted as the
signs of his ignorance are found to be not peculiarities of
Shakespeare's style, but common characteristics of our
language in the Tudor times.
We do not propose to enter here upon the general question.
All that we wish now to do is to point out two or three pos-
sible or probable instances of Shakespeare's knowledge of
Greek ; though indeed to set forth anything new regarding
our great master is a rare achievement, and it may perhaps
turn out that some lynx-eyed commentator has anticipated
every observation we pr'opose to make. We wish to con-
sider certain Greek names that are used by Shakespeare.
We may remark, in passing, that Shakespeare's nomen-
clature presents a subject for study that has by no means
SHAKESPEARE'S GREEK NAMES,
107
yet received the attention it deserves. ' He is never merely
servile in following his originals in this particular ; but exer-
cises a remarkable independence, sometimes simply adopt-
ing, sometimes slightly varying, sometimes wholly rejecting
the names he found in them. It is difficult to imagine that
this conduct was merely arbitrary and careless. Euphony
must of course have had its influence; often there must
have occurred other considerations of no trifling interest, if
only we could discover and understand them. A singular
instance of a complete re-christening is to be found in The
Winter's Tale, The material of this play is, as is well
known, Robert Greene's Dorastus and Faunia, Here are
the two name-lists : —
The Novel. The Play,
. The Novel,
The Play,
Pandosto = Polixenes.
Gaviftter =
Mamillius.
Egistus = Leontes.
Dorastus =
i:«'lorizel.
Bellaria = Hermione.
Faunia =
Perdita.
Franion = Camillo.
In the older Ifamlet — in the 1603 4to. — Polonius is called
Corambis, Corambus in the German Play printed by Mr.
Albert Cohn ; Claudius in the German Play is Erico. Com-
paring As You Like It with its original — Lodge's Euphue^
Golden Legacie — in this respect, we find no trace of Jaques
and Touchstone either in name or personality ; the Orlando
we know so well is the development of a certain Rosader ;
Oliver, Orlando's brother, is Saladyne ; Celia is Alinda ; but
the names Aliena, Phoebe, Ganymede, Adam, are taken
from Lodge without alteration But we cannot here attempt
the investigiation of this question. We will only say that
we believe that from a thorough scrutiny of it some valuable
light might be cast upon Shakespeare and his art.
To turn to our special business in this paper : some of
io8 ESS A YS AND NOTES,
the most noticeable Greek names used by Shakespeare
are Apemantus, Sycorax, Autolycus, Desdemona — through
the Italian, possibly Ophelia. Every one of these namies,
except perhaps Sycorax, was adopted by Shakespeare from
some older work ; but what we wish to point out is the full
intelligence and mastery of their sense and associations
with which he uses them.
Of the name Ophelia Mr. Ruskin has spoken with much
ingenuity. He considers it to be the Greek w0£\/a, " help,"
and in its application to Polonius's daughter to have an
ironical force. In one point of view Ophelia was the cause
of the terrible tragedy, in whose wild current she herself too
was swept away. She by her weakness, as Lady Macbeth
by her strength, spread destruction round about her. Not
that one is to blame ber; she acts according to her nature
and capacity, and she can do no more. But it is piteous
and dreadful to see how vainly her lover turns towards her
for sympathy and succour. More than once, with his faith
in humanity well nigh prostrate and all his powers unstrung
by suspicion and doubt and despair, he wduldfain find in her
some high restorative of belief and confidence — some divine
elixir to make life livable ; he would fain find help, but help
for him there is none. The name she bears then may con-
tain in it an awful irony. And this Shakespeare may have
perceived and felt and acknowledged, — Hamlet yiz.% certainly
written in a period of his life when for some reason or
another his soul was vexed and embittered within him, — '
although he did not create the name. It was his character-
istic to see the significance of things just as they were put
.before him, instead of re-arranging them in order to express
some nieaning he might wish to give them. That he found
the nanle in the older play — the play referred to by Nash in
his Preface to Greene's Menaphon in 1587, and mentioned
SHAKESPEARE'S GREEK NAMES, 109
in Henslowe's Diary in 1594 — we can scarcely doubt. It
does not occur in The Hysiorie of Hamblety -the trans-
lation from Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques^ which itself
derived the story from the Historia Danica of Saxo Gram-
maticus, though there is a curious mention in it of a lady
employed to corrupt Hamlet, who, however, informed him
of the treason, " as being one that from her infancy loved
and favoured him." In the 1603 4to. it appears as Ofelia \
the German pjay has it in the shape that is familiar to
us.
A play, remarkable for its Greek nomenclature, is the
Winter's Tale, already mentioned on another account —
remarkable because there is little in the original to suggest
or encourage such Hellenism ; see the list given above. To .
the Greek names there recorded may be added, Antigonus,
Cleomenes, Archidamus, Dion, Autolycus, and Dorcas. We
may observe that all these names, except perhaps Dorcas
and Leontes, are found in Plutarch's Lives. We will say a
few words about Autolycus.
Both the character and the name are entirely of Shake-
speare's invention. Whence came this prince of pedlars and
of pickpockets ? No doubt the man had in some sort been
espied and watched by him who has painted him for all
time — at some Stratford wake, when Mr. Shakespeare of
New Place was taking Mistress Susanna and her sister
.Judith to see what" was to be seen ; or at. Bartholomew Fair,
as he strolled through it perchance with Mr. Benjamin
Jonson ; but what a name to give him ! Yet it was care-
fully chosen. There was an ancient thief of famous memory
called Autolycus. His name probably is significant of his
nature. It should mean All-wolf, Very-wolf, Wolfs-self.
See Hom. Od, xix. 392-8, where the old nurse Eurukleia is
bathing the feet of the not yet identified Odusseus :
I lo £SSA VS AND NOTES,
NTjc ^' Ojo' Jffffov iovoa ava^ff eov' avTiKa d* lyina
opXriv' Tr}v icoTk fiiv avg rjXatrs XtVKf hhovri
JIapvri<r6vS* iXOovra fitr' Ai&roXw/coi/ « Koi vlaQ,
firirpbg kr}g irarkp s<t9X6v, 8g AvOp^jTrovg iKBKcurTO
KXeTTTOtrvvy 9\ Spicy te' 6ebg'S6 oi ahrbg iSwKtv .
'Epfidag' ry ydp KtxcLpitrfikva firjpia Koiev
iipvSyv i^d* ipHpaiv' 6 Be oi Trpo^ptov lift diniB&i,
Here is Chapman's rendering of the passage, published in
i6i6,.but, probably enough, read and known in a certain
circle some years before. As the old servant bathes her
sovereign's feet she observes the scar—
" Which witness'd by her eye
Was straight approv'd. He first received this sore
As in Parnassus' tops a white-tooth'd boar
He stood in chase withal, who strook him there
At such time as he lived a sojourner
With his grandsire Autolycus ; who th' art .
Of theft and swearing (not out of the heart
But by equivocation) first adorn*d
Your witty man withal, and was suborn'd'
By Jove's descent, ingenious Mercury,
Who did bestow it, since so many a thigh
Of lambs and kids he had on him bestow'd
In sacred flames ; who therefore when he vow'd
Was ever with him."
Let us notice, by the way, that curious addition Chapman
makes — " not out of the heart, but by equivocation " — which
thqre is nothing whatever in the Greek to justify. Evidently
the Englishman with his ideas of truth telling, did not appre-
ciate, or understand, the Greek hivorrigy " awful cleverness,"
"sharpness," "subtlety." Again, EKiKaaro does not mean
"adorn'd," but "surpassed." In the following lines the
"descent" seems, to mean descendant, son: "Jove's de-
scent " is Chapman's equivalent for Bebg avrog. Turn from
the Odyssey to the Winter's Tale, " My traffic is, sheets,"
says the worthy prig-pedlar; "when the kite builds, look
SHAKESPEARE'S GREEK NAMES, 1 1 1
to lesser linen. My father named me Autolycus, who being,
as I am, litter'd under Mercury, was likewise a snapper up
of unconsidered trifles." We will add that the statement
made in the latter sentence about his father, must surely be
connected with what Autolycus is said by Ovid to have been
—patricB non degener artis ; see the eleventh book of the
Metamorphoses^ where is narrated the birth of our light-
fingered friend— /urtum ingeniosus ad omne. Another point
of contact between Shakespeare's rogue and the ancient one,
is that both have a ready gift of self-transformation. The
ancient is said to have had the power of metamorphosis.
And so, in the Winter's T.ale^ the rogue often changes his
part. He appears as a shabby, ci-devant valet — which he is,
as the denuded victim, of thieves, as a most successful
pedlar, as a courtier, and lastly as a fawning and servile
dependent.
The name Desdemona claims a few wprds. In the
narrative upon which Othello is certainly founded (Heca-
tommithiy Decad. III. Nov. 7), — ^whether Shakespeare read
. it-in the original or a translation must, remain an open ques-
tion, the more probable answer at present being that he \
read it in the Italian — that, as Mr. Collier points out, is . \
the only name introduced by Cinthio. In Cinthio's novel
Othello is " the Moor," Cassio " the lieutenant " (il capo di
squadrone), lago "the ensign" or "ancient" (ralfiero).
There can be little doubt, we presume, that the name Desde-
mona is from the Greek Ivalai^utiVy " ill-starred," and its sin-
gular fitness for the unfortunate woman who bears it will need
no assertion for those who. really know the play. Amongst
all Shakespeare's heroines she is emphatically // lvalai\ntiv^
" the ill-starred one." So lovely, so loving, so accomplished,
and true and pure, yet perishing so miserably ! " Oh, the
world hath not a sweeter creature; she might lie by an
1 12 ESS A YS AND NOTES.
emperor's side and. command him tasks. ... An admirable
musician ; oh, €he will sing the savageness out of a bear ; of
so high and plenteous wit and invention. . . . And, then,
of so gentle a condition ! " " Ay, too gentle," says Evil in-
carnate in the shape of lago. . " Nay, that's certain," replies
the poor victim ; " but yet the pity of it^ lago ! O lago, the
pity of it, lago ! " For the most part Shakespeare delights
in tracing the action of the great moral laws of the world, and
showing how fearful is the penalty of transgression — how, as
. -^schylus has it —
H ng 'AiroXXwv
. ff H&v ri Zeijg ....
• . • .
vtrrepSwoivov
irsfiTTH TTOpafidmv *Epivvv,
But sometimes he exhibits a yet more dreadful spectacle — a
spectacle mysterious, inscrutable, soul-prostrating. It is
Fate blind, inexorable, rapacious. Desdemona is one of
Fate's choicest victims. Her "graces serve" her "but as
enemies." Her very virtues bring on her ruin. What is
most innocent is construed into evidence against her. In
obeying the best instincts of her clear* spirit she excites the
e vilest suspicions and secures the bitterest condemnation.
The truth from her lips is turned into a lie. In the last Act,
when Othello charges her with unfaithfulness, her answers,
by an almost incredible infelicity, are, through the very purity
of her nature, just such as to confirm his detestable impeach-
ment. " Let him confess the truth," she says of Cassio and
the handkerchief.
"(9M. He hath confessed.
Des, What, my lord ?
Otk. That he hath— us'd thee.
Des, How? unlawfully?
O^A, Ay.
SHAKESPEARE'S GREEK NAMES, 113
Da. He will no( Say sq.
0th. No, hU mouth is stopp'd ;
Honest lago halfa la'en oi&ex for't.
T>i!. O 1 my fear interprets ; what, is he dead ?
Otk. Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge
Had Stomach for them all.
Dt!. Alas \ be is betray'd, and I undone.
Oth, Out, slrampet ! weep'st Ihou for him to my face ?
Des. O, banish me, my lord, but l(is in all likelihood never
beheld by Shakespeare, and " was even (almost to a cer-
tainty) later than his day " ! In the same way, under
another head, he bestows upon us the ballad of Lear and
his Three Daughters, Whether Gemutus has any right to be
included in these volumes is uncertain, and Mr. Hazlitt may
have the benefit of the doubt. As to the various tales printed
in the section devoted to The Merry Wives of Windsor, they
would all be rightly placed in a work designed to illustrate
Shakespeare ; but it is another thing to print them as his
originals. At the close of the list we have " The first Sketch
of the Play," i,e, a reprint of the quarto of 1602. Que diable
allait-il faire dans cette gaiere ? Why have we not, then, the
1603 Hamlet, or the 1597 Richard ILL, ? It will be noticed
that Mr. Hazlitt adheres to Mr. HalliwelFs view as to the
t6o2 edition of the Merry Wives, The 1603 Hamlet, on
the other hand, he regards as a pirated copy ; but this by
the way. To glance at other parts of these volumes, the
Measure for Measure section contains a story fi-om the
histories of Gk)ulart, already mentioned as published in
1607. Troilus and Cressida has no originals quoted for it,
though if Mr. Hazhtt was at all consistent he should have
quoted Chaucer's Troilus and Cressida, inasmuch as he
quotes the Knighfs Tale in connection with the Two Noble
Kinsmen! For Cymbeline we are supplied with a copy
of the Story of the Fishwife of Standon-the-Green from
Westward for Smelts, 1620 ! But signal as are other of Mr.
Hazlitt's achievements in this direction, his crowning exploit,
we think, is quoting the Life of Pericles from North's
Plutarch to illustrate the play of Pericles, Tyre is as Athens
to Mr. Hazlitt. After this remarkable feat, we really do not
124 ^SSA YS AND NOTES,
see why he has stopped an)nvhere. Why not reprint all
Plutarch ? Why not Elizabethan literature as a whole ?
Why not all literature ?
It will be by this time abundantly clear to our readers that
the title of this work is by no means particularly accurate.
In fiact, Mr. Hazlitt rather reminds us of Juvenal :
" Quicquid agunt homines ....
nostri est farrago libelli. "
Nor can we say that the details of the editing are emi-
nently praiseworthy. The texts given can, indeed, boast of
an accuracy superior* to that displayed in Mr. Collier's
volumes. Mr. Collier speaks frankly enough oh the subject
in his preface :
" The editor has had time to do little more than to afford
a general superintendence, and to preface the introductory
notices : the intelligent publisher, who has devoted so much
time and study to Shakespearian literature, has often saved
him the trouble of searching materials in public and private
depositories, and of collating the reprints with the originals.
For this part of the task, therefore, Mr. Rodd is re-
sponsible."
Similarly, Mr. Hazlitt had to thank Mr. B. J. JefTery, of
the Department of Manuscripts, British Museum. "Mr.
Jeffery verified for me a large proportion of the texts intro-
duced here, and the volumes owe to him the correction of
innumerable errors in the former edition." In a note to the
Ta/e of the Fishwife of Brentford it is said that " the text
exhibited by Mr. Halliwell is not true to the original" —
words that leave an impression somewhat unjust to Mr.
Halliwell. But beyond this textual carefulness — which, how-
ever, is a great matter — ^little or nothing is done. Mr.
Hazlitt's notes are " few and far between," but they cannot
HAZLirrS SHAKESPEARE'S LIBRAE Y. 125
on that account be likened to " angels' visits." The metrical
arrangement is not always exact — e.g,, we find these lines
printed as prose (Part II., voU i., p. 312) —
" Pleaseth your Grace the Earle of Salsbury,
Penbroke, Essex, Clare, and Arundell,
With all the Barons that did fight for thee,
Are on a sodeine fled with all their powers
To joyne with John to drive thee back againe."
If this is prose, what then is " metre " or " measure " ?
Tk^ Taming of the Shrew is mentioned as the Taming of a
Shrew. Surely Mr. Hazlitt knows the importance of the
article here ? In another place he speaks of ^^The Life of
Timon by North."
Having pointed out some of the shortcomings and re-
dundances of this misnamed work — why not call it Mr.
Hazlitt's Library, or, indefinitely. Somebody's Library, or,
better, Nobody's Library ? — ^we may dwell with pleasure on
its merits. We may remove the foot from Ebal— the atti-
tude we described is something fatiguing, — and stand at ease
on the cheerfuUer height.
We think it is a very great advantage to have so much of
Shakespeare's undoubted material placed within general
reach. Mr. Hazlitt here combines, with additions, two
books of extreme value to the student — Mr. Collier's work,
already several times mentioned, and Steevens's Six Old
Plays. It is nearly a century since the latter compila-
tion was issued — more than a generation since the former
appeared — and both are very rare. Now to those who really
care to study Shakespeare, and not merely to talk and dog-
matize about him, while they know little or nothing of the
subject — ^we are overrun with such persons — the reprinting
of two such compilations is no small blessing. Obviously
one of the very best ways of estimating Shakespeare is fur-
126 ESS A YS AND NOTES,
nished by an acquaintance with the material that he had to
use and used. Common enough clay this was, and yet
starting up at his wondrous touch into the most exquisite,
various, substantial forms of life. Two things are notice-
able : (i) the fidelity with which at times he, followed his
originals, and (2) the subtlety with which, even as he follows
them with such humble faithfulness, they are transformed
and ennobled. What inscrutable magic ! The words seem
all the same, and yet a new life breathes out of them. The
voice is Shakespeare's voice ; but the hands are the hands of
Plutarch, or Greene, or Lodge. It has often been remarked
how closely Shakespeare follows North in Julius Ccesar and
in Antony and Cleopatra^ especially in the famous passage
describing the " gypsey's " progress along the Cydrius. A
not less memorable instance is to be found in Coriolanus.
Here is North's version of a part of Volumnia's speech, when
the mother kneels before the son, whose pride and obstinacy,
amazing as they are to her, are yet fruit she has herself
planted and nurtured ; —
" Then she spake in this sort : If we held our peace (my
Sonne) and determined not to speake, the state of our poor
bodies, and present sight of our raiment would easily bewray
to thee what life we have led at home, since thy exile and
abode abroad ; but think now with thyselfe, how much more
unfortunately then all the women living, we are come hither,
considering that the sight which should be most pleasant to
all other to behold, spitefull fortune hath made most feare-
full to us : making my selfe to see my sonne, and my daughter
here, her husband, besieging the walles of his native coun-
trey : so as that which is the onely comfort to all other in
their adversitie and miserie, to pray unto the Gods and to
call to them for aide is the onely thing which plungeth us
into most deep perplexitie," &c. (Part I., vol. iii., p. 304).
HAZLITTS SHAKESPEARE'S LIBRAR Y, 1 27
One cannot wonder that a speech, spoken so simply, so
truly, so pathetically, should have had attractions for Shake-
speare. He appropriates it not only in substance, but often
verbatim^ yet with such changes as make it a new thing. A
minute study of such appropriations, of the rejection^, the
expansions, the additions — a study not yet made as far as
we know — could not fail to cast light upon the secrecies of
his art. Of course, in the instance we are considering, the
metrification, if we may use the word — " metrify " is used —
accounts for something of the new effect, but by no means
for all of it. The mere rhetoric is improved and refined ;
but what is most remarkable is the transference of the whole
scene into a new air; we are insensibly.bome away into that,
strange, delightful, inexplicable land, the land of "poetry."
Here is the passage as it rises from the hands of the
master : —
** Should we be silent and not speak, our raiment
And state of bodies would bewray what life
We have led since thy exile. Think with thyself
How more unfortunate than all living women
Are we come hither, since that thy sight, which should
Make our eyes flow with joy, hearts dance with comforts,
Constrains them weep, and shake with fear and sorrow ;
Making the mother, wife, and child to see
The son, the husband, and the father tearing
His country's bowels out. And to poor we
Thine enmity's most capital ; thou barr'st
Our prayers to the gods, which is a comfort
That all but we enjoy," &c.
What Dry den says of Ben Jonson might better be said of
Shakespeare : " He invades authors like a monarch, and
what would be theft in other poets is only victory in him."
Assuredly, the extent of such invasions is at first sight sur-
prising. In this respect, the second part of Mr. Hazlitt's
collection is the more interesting, though we must not forget
128 £SSA YS AMD NOTES.
Euphue^ Golden Legacy y in the second volume of Part I.
The second part contains, besides other pieces, The True
Tragedie of Richard the Thirds The Troublesome Raigne of
John King of Englandy The Famous Victories of Henry Fifthy
The First Part of the Contention of the Two Famous Houses
of York and Lancaster, The True Tragedie *of Richard Duke
of Yorky The Historie of Promos and Cassandra, The Tnu
Chronicle Historie of King L^ir and his Three Daughters, The
Taming of a Shrew. To appreciate adequately the splendour
of Shakespeare's genius, these specimens of the drama as he
found it should be carefully read and compared with the
drama which he created. Justly might he have adapted and
adopted Augustus's boast as to the city he had renewed and
beautified. " Urbem," writes Suetonius, " neque pro majes-
tate imperii ornatam et inundationibus incendiisque ob-
noxiam, excoluit adeo ut jure sit gloriatus marmoream se
relinqu^re quam latericiam acctpissit.^^
THE SHAKESPEARE KEY. 129
VI.
THE SHAKESPEARE KEY/
(From the AthetKEum^ July 12, 1879.)
THIS is a very different key from that with which, ac-
cording to Wordsworth, Shakespeare "unlocked his
heart." It is described on the title-page as " Unlocking the
treasures of his style, elucidating the peculiarities of his
construction, and displaying the beauties of his expression,
forming a companion to * The Complete Concordance to
Shakespeare.' "
These bold promises are fairly justified by the volume.
It is a worthy addition to the many useful labours for which
the world is indebted to its veteran authors, only one of
whom, alas, has lived to see its publication. It does not
profess to give any new discoveries or bring out any new
principle of interpretation. There is little or nothing in it
that has not been suggested or said before in some sort
somewhere. It is a compilation, but a compilation made
with much intelligence and showing wide reading and various
information.
"A peculiar advantage possessed by the present work,"
says the preface, " is that it places collectively before the eye
comparative evidence heretofore scattered in notes, glossaries,
and other forms of animadversion on Shakespeare's style ;
so that it may be seen at one view how he uses the same
word or form of expression, and thus frequently becomes an
' By Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke. (Sampson Low and Co.)
K
I30 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
interpreter to himself. Consequently *The Shakespeare
Key ' will aid in determining various disputed readings and
readings suspected of error, by showing assembled together
several similar passages to the one in question ; thus afford-
ing proof of its being in accordance with Shakespeare's
peculiar style."
But is not this, the reader will say, just what is already
done for us by Dr. Alexander Schmidt in his Complete
Dictionary of all the English Words, Phrases, and Con-
structions in the Works of the Foetl And it must be
allowed that in this department of their work Dr. Schmidt is
a formidable . rival, and one already in possession of the
field. Indeed, but for his volumes the present would have
been considerably larger. "While it lay in manuscript,"
says Mrs. Cowden Clarke, "an extremely comprehensive
lexicon was brought out which included many verbal points,
amounting to no fewer than 639 pages of written labour."
Mrs. Clarke certainly did right in cutting out those pages,
and a yet further excision might have been made. But it
remains true that her volume is a valuable help to Shake-
spearian study.
It consists of upwards of a hundred articles of various
length and importance. Amongst the subjects are : " Affected
Use of Words," " Alliteration," " Dramatic Time," " Em-
phasis," " Idioms," " Legal Phrases," " Pronunciation," " Si-
miles," "Spelling of Foreign Words," "Technicalities;"
and on each of these and the other subjects, if no one is
treated exhaustively, something of interest is noted or
recorded. The cardinal defect of the compilation is the
absence of an index, the only clue provided being a table of
contents, many of the terms of which are not easily intelli-
gible, or are not altogether differential. Who would feel
quite sure as to what is meant by " Crossing Speeches,"
THE SHAKESPEARE KEY, 131
" Perfection by Marriage," " Physical Indications," " Power
in Writing Silence and Perfect Impression through Imperfect
Expression," "Sentences Spoken as to what might be
Said " ? What distinction would one expect to be meant
between "Iterated Words" and "Repeated Words"?
Other headings are ** Bitter Puns and Plays on Words :
Conceits," " Ironical Phrases," " Sarcasms," " Peculiar Re-
plies," " Peculiar Use of Words," " Verbs peculiarly Used."
Who is sufficient for these things ? The age of the School-
men is gone, and it is no longer a common faculty to
" Distinguish and divide
A hair *twixt south and south-west side."
It may be doubted whether Touchstone himself, subtle dis-
criminator as he was between retort and quip and reply and
reproof and the rest with their proper adjectives, could
readily decide to which section to turn for some particular
matter.
The great defect of this compilation, then, is the inacces-
sibility of its details. A key is wanted to the key. In fact,
there is here a valuable collection of material rather than a
well-ordered book. It is therefore not likely to be useful in
the way in which it should be and might be, that is, as a
work of reference : it rather forms an interesting assemblage
of Shakespearian notes. In this way it is really valuable,
and worthy of high recommendation. But the other kind of
value might so easily have been added. It is to be hoped
that in a future edition it will be, and so the reader's grati-
tude may be doubled. Good indexes are becoming, in the
immense increase of literature, more and more essential ; and
for this sort of work the importance of an index can scarcely
be exaggerated.
Not the least interesting of the many interesting sections
132 ESS A YS AND NOTES.
is that on dramatic time, which works out the theory first
put forward by the Rev. N. J. Halpin and Prof. Wilson,
that Shakespeare in some of his plays observes two times,
both " long " and " short " — represents a considerable
period as having elapsed during the proceeding of the action,
and also confines it to the course of a few hours or a day.
He leaves the impression of a prolonged space, and yet
crowds his events into the smallest. Thus, in the first three
acts of Julius Ccesar there are many passages which speak
as if some appreciable interval had passed between the con-
versation in which Cassius first tampers with Brutus and the
soliloquy in which Brutus makes up his mind to join the
conspirators ; there are others from which we learn that
that soliloquy is uttered during the very night that followed
that conversation. And the like is noticeable in many other
plays. Even in the Tempest^ where the time is limited to
two or three hours (" Your eld'st acquaintance cannot be
three hours," says Alonso to Ferdinand when at last they
are reunited), the impression is left of a much longer period.
Ferdinand is wrecked, wanders over the island searching
for his father, falls in love, is " austerely punish'd," i.e. is
thoroughly tested and tried, is betrothed, has a masque
performed for his pleasure, and plays chess, all in one
wonderful afternoon. A strange rush and throng of ex-
periences ! What are the fewest minutes in which one could
fall in love and propose, or be proposed to, and arrange
everything satisfactorily? Of course, we have heard of
people loving at first sight, but what of proposing at first
sight? This question of Shakespeare*s dramatic time de-
serves the attention it is receiving from Shakespearian
scholars, and the section on it in The Shakespeare Key is
well worth reading. That his use of two times should be
merely accidental and careless is an idea scouted, and we
THE SHAKESPEARE KEY. 133
think justly, by Mr. and Mrs. Clarke ; and an intelligent
study of it may cast some light on an art which, after all that
has been said about it, is yet most imperfectly appreciated
or understood.
Another extremely interesting section is that headed
"Technicalities." It gives a capital list, with plentiful
illustrations from the plays, of the various sports, fashions,
arts, and sciences whose terminology the poet deigns
occasionally to borrow. Here are recorded Shakespeare's
debts to falconry, hunting, archery, war, riding, duelling,
tilting, seamanship, tennis, heraldry, painting, &c. These
pages may be worth the perusal of those brilliant critics who,
because they find Shakespeare familiar with the terms of an
art or a trade, are so ready to insist that he was, or had been,
a professor or follower of the said art or trade. He uses
baking terms, therefore he was a baker. On the strength of
this section it may be maintained by one of these gentlemen
that he was a Jack-of-all-trades. Perhaps this is what
Greene meant by calling him Joannes Factotum. We
respectfully submit this view to the moths who are always
hovering around the Shakespearian candle, and are never
happy till they have scorched themselves in it.
134 £SSA YS AND NOTES,
VII.
ELZFS ESSAYS ON SHAKESPEARE.
"translated, with the author's sanction,
by l. dora schmitz."
(From the Academy for Oct. 9, 1875.)
GERMANY is so highly distinguished for its Shake-
speare studies, and Dr. Elze's name is so well known
in connection with the German Shakespeare Society, that
we opened this volume with considerable interest and
hope ; and we have not been disappointed. It consists of
nine articles, five discussing certain plays — The Tempest^ A
Midsummer Ntghfs Dreamy The Merchant of Venice^ AWs
Well that Ends Well, and Henry VIIL — in certain aspects,
chronological or material or aesthetic, and three treating
respectively of" The Supposed Travels of Shakespeare," " Sir
William Davenant,*' and " The Orthography of Shakespeare's
Name." On the whole we can recommend the volume, if
not to all readers, yet to all students of Shakespeare. That
wonderful being " the general reader " would probably rise
from its perusal confused and clouded. The interminable
controversies and seemingly distinctionless differences which
it indicates or contains would reduce him to a pitiable con-
dition of utter bewilderment. Chaos would be come again.
But one more familiar with the subject discussed, and
resolved not to be lost in the mists that will arise in the
treatment of questions so subtle and delicate, but to hold
his way right on through them, may derive much advantage
ELZKS ESS A YS ON SHAKESPEARE, 135
from Dr. Elze's essays. To our thinking Dr. Elze is by no
means always right in his conclusions. We think he is quite
wrong as to the date of The Tempest y which, mainly on
the strength of a passage in Ben Jonson's Volpone, he
holds to be 1604; and so as to the date of Henry VIIL^
which he supposes to have appeared before the death of
Queen Elizabeth. Iri cases where he cannot be said to be
certainly wrong, he can as little be pronounced certainly
right. Throughout the book there is a want of solidity, so
far as' demonstration is concerned. The evidence, indeed,
that is occasionally advanced is so slight as to be scarcely
tangible. But yet the book is worth reading. It has been
said, libellously or not, of women and of certain judges, that
it would be well if they would give their conclusions without
stating their reasons. Now just the opposite may be said of
Dr. Elze : we value his reasons, but not his conclusions.
The information in which he abounds is so various and so
valuable that we are glad to have the benefit of it, though
often we sympathize not at all with the purpose to which it
is applied. So to speak, it is pleasant to wander with Dr.
Elze in the b5rways and meadows of the Elizabethan age ;
however we may differ from him as to the destination of any
particular path. He has so much to say about the scenery
through which we pass, that we willingly follow for a while.
But when after an agreeable lecture, our guide proclaims
that he has conducted to such and such a spot, we can only
say : " Thank you much. Doctor, for your good company ;
but really we think we have not arrived at the place you
name, but at quite a different spot, if, indeed, we have
arrived an)nvhere. And why should we be always arriving ?
Pray, talk on, and do not trouble yourself and us as to our
whereabouts T Let us mention one or two of the points on
which Dr. Elze is well worth hearing, quite apart from
136 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
"argal" expressed or understood in his consideration of
them. We are happy to find him confirming two notions
we have ourselves long entertained, — that our great poet's
obligations to Montaigne and to Marlowe have not yet been
adequately recognized. Of course everybody has noticed
the direct quotation from the famous Essays — from Chap.
XXX. " Of Cannibals," made by Gonzalo to amuse the
sorrow-stricken king in TTie Tempest (act ii. sc. i, 144-172);
but other signs of acquaintance with Montaigne, though
that quotation might well have prepared us to expect them,
have, we believe, been scarcely at all perceived. In his
essay on The Tempest Dr. Elze makes these remarks : —
" Hamlet's views about the uncertainty of death, his per-
suasion that ' the readiness is all,' his thoughts about suicide,
have their prototype in Essai XIX. of the first book of Mon-
taigne (* Que philosopher, c'est apprendre k mourir '), and in
Essai III. of the second book (* Coustume de I'lsle de Cea ').
The idea that nothing in itself is either good or bad, but that .
our thinking makes it so, which is expressed not only in
Hamlet II. ii., but in other passages of Shakespeare as well,
might recall Essai XL. of the first book (* Que le goust des
biens et des maux despend en bonne partie de Topinion que
nous en avons'); this is, however, only a specious resemblance,
for Montaigne speaks of physical, Shakespeare of moral good
and evil. The description of the music of the spheres in The
Merchant of Venice (V. i.) seems likewise taken from Mon-
taigne (Book i. Essai XXII.), which at the same time proves
that Shakespeare must have read the French philosopher
in the original, for at the time of the composition of The
Merchant of Venice (1594), Florio's translation can scarcely
have been in existence, or it must have literally followed
the maxim nonum prematur in annumP Dr. Elze does not
insist on Shakespeare's indebtedness in these passages. " All
ELZE^S ESSA YS ON SHAKESPEARE. 137
these passages," he writes, " treat of views and ideas which
no doubt were widely spread, and the similarity is too littlie
palpable to justify the reproach of * stealing.' " ( Volpone^
III. 2.)
In any case, he has given us some valuable illustrations,
and if, as to the points just mentioned, we do not believe in
the actual contact of the greatest French mind with the
greatest English of the sixteenth century, yet — and this is of
higher interest — ^we are led to discern a certain native
alliance and sympathy between these supreme geniuses. We
think ourselves that there are many more indications of that
direct contact than have yet been collected ; but we cannot
now stay to particularize. We should confidently point to
the fact that a copy of Florio's Montaigne has come down to
us with Shakespeare's autograph in it, but that the genuine-
ness of the inscription has been seriously doubted.
The influence of Marlowe upon Shakespeare is more patent
and certain. If the great master ever had himself a master
it was Marlowe. Many a " saw " of that shepherd he found
" of might." It is true that as he grew to artistic maturity,
he saw in his predecessor's work much that was provocative
of ridicule, and that he ridiculed it To make Pistol talk
in Tamberlaine's vein was significant of a keen sense of
Tamberlaine's excesses. But in his not unkindly laughter
at such fantastic bombast, he never ceased to admire what
was to be admired. If he derides in Henry IV., he quotes
approvingly in As You Like It, In the Merry Wives of
Windsor the derision and the acceptance appear together.
In his wrath — it was only comical wrath — he remembered
mercy ; nay, he remembered affection. Perhaps only now
are we beginning really to appreciate the power of the
first in time of the great Elizabethans. Certainly no formal
tribute has ever before been paid him comparable with
/
138 ESSA YS AND NOTES,
that lately offered by a poet of our own day, who is
also a critic of no mean order. But the highest tribute
of all was paid him by Shakespeare's attention and study-
Of this connection, as seen in at least one play, Dr. Elze
speaks very positively. He says that, "the protot)rpe of
Shylock "... clearly lies in Marlowe's Jew of Malta, with-
out which the Merchant of Venice would, in all proba-
bility, never have been written. It is strange that, so far
as we know, no German commentator has yet compared
Marlowe's tragedy; other English critics deny, or at all
events do not sufficiently apprize (sic) the relations exist-
ing between the two plays. In Hallam's eyes, Marlowe's
Barabas is unworthy to be regarded as the prototype of Shy-
lock, though the Jew of Malta may possibly have furnished
Shakespeare with a few hints. Dyce despatches the subject
with equal brevity. He admits, indeed, that Shakespeare
was intimately acquainted with Marlowe's play, " but," he con-
tinues, " no one who has carefully compared the character of
Barabas with that of Shylock will allow that he received more
than unimportant hints from it." The collection of so-
called parallel passages from both plays in the appendix of
Waldron's edition and continuation of Jonson's Sad Shepherd^
he says, " proves nothing." And Dr. Elze proceeds to " see
what is meant by a few and unimportant hints." A good
deal of what he proceeds to say is somewhat overstrained ;
but something, we think, holds firm.
" To such a searcher of hearts as Shakespeare it was an
irresistible temptation to transform this Barabas into a
genuine Jewish usurer, and to change the bombastic and
impossible criminal into a real man, with human motives,
passions, and actions. Barabas, if any, was the man suited
to be made the claimant in the law-suit in regard to the
pound of flesh ; while at the same time his daughter afforded
ELZE'S ESS A YS ON SHAKESPEARE, 139
the poet a handle to bring him into connections of a diffe-
rent kind with the Christian world:"
And in all the Essays, whether we go with their leading
tenets or not, there is much that "tends to edification."
Thus in another part of that on the Merchant may be found
some remarks on the question, often raised, whether Shylock
is a tragic or a comic character. How greatly public opinion
has changed in certain respects is very curiously indicated
by the very existence of such a question. It is certain that
to an Elizabethan audience there could be nothing tragic in
the presentment of Shylock, if the idea of tragedy involves,
as it certainly does, an element of pity. Shylock might well
say, " Sufferance is the badge of all our tribe." Dr. Elze
quotes from Hebler this quotation from Luther :— " Know
thou, dear Christian, that next to the devil, thou canst have
no more bitter or eager enemy than a downright Jew, one
who seriously means to be the Jew. I will give thee mine
honest advice : set fire to their synagogues, and that which
will not burn, load and cover it with earth, so that man
shall see neither a stone nor a vestige of it everlastingly."
When such crying bigotry possessed the leaders of the
people, what could be hoped ? When the blind lead the
blind they both, we are told, fall into the ditch.
Marlowe's Barabas was got up in a purely comic fashion.
He was equipped with a big red nose. " O, mistress," says
Ithamar, " I have the bravest, gravest, secret, subtle, bottle-
nosed knave to my master that ever gentleman had." How
merciless is Gratiano's banter in Shakespeare's play ! How
supreme the gentle Antonio's scorn ! What a terrible im-
peachment it is that Shylock can bring against
" The kindest man,
The best condition'd and unwearied spirit
In doing courtesies."
I40 ESS A YS AND NOTES,
" He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million,
laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my
nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated
mine enemies ; and what's his reason ? I am a Jew ! " \Vhat
a revolution of sentiment has taken place ! " However
grievously Shylock may have offended, however heartily
we may despise and condemn his character, yet we cannot
avoid a momentary feeling of sympathy with him when he
staggers out of the court, crushed by the pardon which the
Doge has granted him. Nay, we feel inclined to agree
with the young lady who, according to H. Heine, at the
conclusion of the fourth act, exclaimed, * The poor man is
wronged ! ' "
Certainly there is no more impressive proof of Shake-
speare's splendid humanity than the manner in which, with-
out shocking the prejudices of his age by any pedantic ser-
monizings, he has brought the outcast of society within the
range of our sympathy. Marlowe's Jew is a monster ; the
Jew of Shakespeare is^ after all, a man, with a heart once
capable of tenderness, but at length petrified by ill uses and
ill usage, God-made, like the rest of us, man-marred, like so
many.
There is much interesting matter in the chapter on Shake-
speare's supposed travels. Dr. Elze does not see any
reason for agreeing with Knight as to his having visited Scot-
land. He thinks that the " Laurence Fletcher, Comediane
to his Majestie," of the Aberdeen records of 1601, was not a
member of a strolling company of players, but was " lent "
by the King to Sir Francis Hospitall, of Haulszie, a French
nobleman, upon whom the freedom of the borough was con-
ferred. " The king lent him his court comedian, who in so far,
may be regarded as a pendant to * my lord of Leicester's jest-
ing player.' " Surely a very gratuitous assumption. His court
ELZE'S ESSA YS ON SHAKESPEARE, 141
comedian? The phrase seems to carry us back to pre-
Thespian days, when a corps dramatique consisted of one.
We do not think it could mean " a fool." Besides, we
happen to know the name of King James's fool, and it was
not Fletcher. We do not think Knight's argument decisive,
far from it ; but really, as Shakespearian arguments go, it is
not so bad.
Dr. Elze may be said to add something to the proba-
bility of Shakespeare's having visited Italy. It is indeed
difficult to believe that the poet never himself saw those
fair blue skies beneath which so many of his creations
move as beneath their native and proper canopy. The very
air of Italy seems blowing through so many of his scenes.
Does any non-Italian work transport us into the bright,
careless, star-clear South, as the last act of The Merchant of
Venice transports us ? The most striking fresh suggestions
Dr. Elze makes, relate to the mention of Julio Romano in
The Winter's Tale:—
" To the question why he should have selected this artist
before all others, some critics might be inclined to answer
that he picked up the name at random, if we may use the
expression. But such an answer would be quite unsatisfac-
tory, in the face of the fact that the poet most correctly esti-
mates Romano's merits as an artist, and praises him not only
in eloquent but the most appropriate words." Dr. Elze's
answer is "that he obtained his knowledge of Romano's
works by personal inspection." The Palazzo del T in
Mantua, built by Romano, and filled with his paintings and
drawings, was one of the wonders of the age. But Shake-
speare makes him a sculptor! Here Dr. Elze's answer is
really notable. It is given by the quotation of two epitaphs
found in Vasari.
142 ESSA YS AND NOTES,
•* Videbat Jupiter corpora sculpta pictaque
Spirare, aedes mortalium aequarier coelo,
Julii virtute Romani ; tunc iratus
Concilio divorum omnium vocato,
Ilium aeteriis {sic) sustulit ; quod pati nequiret
Vinci aut aequari ab homine terrigena."
And,
** Romanus moriens secum tres Julius arteis
Abstulit; baud minim, quatuor unus erat."
((
Tres artes! Corpora sculpta!" exclaims Dr. Elze, with
pardonable exultation. " It is true that Vasari makes no
further mention of Romano's sculptures, neither do his Ger-
man translators, nor, as far as we know, any recent art-his-
torian, say a word about them. But Shakespeare is never-
theless right ; he has made no blunder ; he has not abused
the poetical licence by introducing Romano as a sculptor.
And more than this, his praise of Romano wonderfully agrees
with the epitaph in which truth to nature and life is like-
wise praised as being Julio's chief excellence (if he could
put breath into his work — * videbat Jupiter corpora spirare ').
Is this chance ? "
Dr. Elze's conclusion is that Shakespeare had been at
Mantua, and had there seen Romano's works, and read his
epitaphs. As we have said, we think he has, by this and
other considerations, certainly increased the probability of
the Italian travels.
Our readers may by this time be able to judge for them-
selves of the possible profit to be derived from the volume
before us. We will only now, in conclusion, briefly men-
tion what seems to us Dr. Elze's chief deficiency, and his
chief misapprehension.
He seems unable to appreciate adequately the importance
of the consideration of style — we use the term in its most com-
prehensive sense — in deciding or discussing Shakespearian
ELZBS ESSA YS ON SHAKESPEARE, 143
chronology, and other Shakespearian questions. We submit,
for instance, that no critic duly competent in this respect,
would dream of assigning The Tempest to about the same
date as King Lear. It is in this respect that German criti-
cism has so often failed disastrously. How else could
Schlegel and other countrymen of his give such remarkable
verdicts on what we English call, and persist in calling,
the " spurious plays ? " Think of this dictum of Schlegel's :
Thomas Lord Cromwell ^ Sir John Oldcastle (First Part), A
Yorkshire Tragedy, "are not only unquestionably Shake-
speare's, but in my opinion, they deserve to be classed
among his best and maturest works !"
Again, Dr. Elze, in our opinion, lays a great deal too
much stress on Shakespeare's early maturity. The facts,
all that are well substantiated, do not make for this view ;
but Dr. Elze will have it so. What encourages him is
what may be called comparative biography. He is always
ready with a list of achievements performed at an early
age — Raphael's painting the Sposalizio in his twenty-first
year, the Entombment, in the Borghese Gallery, and the
Belle Jardiniere, in his twenty-fourth, and beginning the
Stanze in his twenty-fifth ; Mozarf s composing his Mithri-
dates in his fourteenth year, his Idomeneo in his twenty-
fifth, his EntJUhrung aus dem Serail in his twenty-sixth.
But, putting aside the questions of antecedents — the ques-
tion whether Shakespeare's early advantages equalled those
enjoyed by other great spirits — comparative biography tells
also a quite difterent tale. It tells us of great geniuses who
were slow in putting forth fruit. In England, for instance,
Dryden, Richardson, Scott all ripened slowly. If all these
three men had died even when they were upwards of forty,
their names would well-nigh have passed away with them ;
at the best, but a dim glory would have been theirs. Of
144 £SSA yS AND NOTES.
Shakespeare, we know for certain that he wrote his J^ape of
Liicrece in 1593 and the following year. We know it for
certain, because, dedicating Venus and Adonis to the Earl
of Southampton, in 1593, and apologizing for his "un-
polished lines," he vows " to take advantage of all idle hours
till I have honoured you with some graver labour." And, in
1594, the Rape of Lucrece — "the graver labour promised" —
appears, dedicated, of course, to the same nobleman. We
have, then, a sure representative of Shakespeare's develop-
ment in 1593-4, when he was just thirty years old. Now,
what does it show us ? Not the great playwright, but the
great poet, in the full lavish enjoyment of a yet unpruned
exuberant youthful fancy, his powers not yet reduced to
obey dramatic restraints, the greatest heir of the world, filled
with the delighted consciousness of his magnificent dower,
but not yet wholly submitting himself to artistic discipline
and economy.
CONDITIONS OF THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA. 145
VIII.
SOME CONDITIONS
OF THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA.
(From the Saturday Review for July 31, 1875.)
A QUESTION debated in many minds just now is the
possible revival of the drama. When one of the chief
poets of the day, who has previously written nothing of the
kind, appears as a playwright, hope naturally awakes. Such
was the brilliancy of our Elizabethan era that we can never
cease to be dazzled by it — never cease to think of it as the
golden age of our literature, and, therefore, as an age, the
forms and modes of which are always to be aspired after. It
is true that since those palmy days the decline and fall of
our drama has been steady and complete ; but yet we cannot
help hoping it may rise again. We cannot reconcile our-
selves to the extinction of the glory of our literature. We
know that there are " flaming ministers," whose former light
can be restored, and we are eager to believe this to be one
of them. And yet for that " cunning'st pattern of excelling
nature," as we may well call the Elizabethan drama, when
its flame is put out, who knows " where is that Promethean
heat that can " its ** light relume " ?
It may be worth while considering for a moment two of
the conditions under which our drama throve so splendidly
at the close of the sixteenth century. Let us notice, first,
the active intellectuality of the Elizabethan age ; and,
secondly, that it was not a time when books were abundant,
146 - ESSA YS AND NOTES.
or the study of them a common habit. Out of many cir-
cumstances that must co-exist, if a drama is to prosper, there
are certainly two of them most important. There must be a
thirsty nation, and it must slake its thirst, not at books, but
at plays. The demand will create the supply. If a people,
roused by keen intellectual impulses, tjims to the stage for
the satisfaction of its wants, the stage will be found respon-
sive. The " drink divine " which is asked for by " the thirst
which from the soiil doth rise " will assuredly be provided.
It is only at certain junctures that a people will so turn ; but
at them it will not turn in vain. Both at Athens and in
London, when the nation crowded to the theatre, the theatre
gave it a royal welcome.
It is hardly necessary to .point out how various and how
intense was the mental activity of the Elizabethan age. Life
in England has never been broader and deeper than it was
then. It was morning with us, so to speak. We were
waking to a fresh consciousness of ourselves, and of the
world around us. The old things had passed away, and,
behold, all things were become new.
** Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive ;
But to be young was very heaven ! "
•
A strange sense of power thrilled us, and the revelation of
unsuspected opportunities for exertion and enterprise trans-
formed our inmost being. The very earth widened aroiirid
us ; and where but yesterday there rose forbidding barriers,
there now spread far away an endless expanse of unexplored
regions, mysterious, fascinating, delightful; and as with
material confinements, so it was with spiritual. In the
universe of thought the mind wandered free. For good and
for evil, it defied the restraints of previous dogmatisms, and
stepped boldly within the precincts from which it had been
CONDITIONS OF THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA, 147
rigorously interdicted. Was there ever in England such
another age of movement ? — an age so eager, so fearless, so
sanguine, so exultant in its liberty, so gwift to do or die ?
Never, perhaps, was the national imagination so quickened
and so vigorous. Every day produced its poet :
" The isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not."
Nor could it be otherwise. A land so bright-hearted could
not but break forth into singing. Joy, even as sorrow, must
have words given it — the joy
" That 4oes not speak
Whispers the o'erfraught heart, and bids it break."
There is no more striking recognition of the keen intelli-
gence of the Elizabethans, and the readiness and facility of
their imaginations, than is afforded by Shakespeare himself
in the choruses X)f his Henry V. Reading them, one sees
how a Shakespeare was possible. They show us how he
could rely upon his audience. Conscious of the grotesque
contrast between, the " unworthy scaffold " of the Globe and
the " so gxeat an object " brought forth upon it —
"Can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of«France ? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt ? "
He can appeal to the spectators to make, up all the deficien-
cies. " Let us," he says,
•* On your imaginary forces work.
* * • * * *
Piece -out our imperfections with your thoughts ;
Into a thousand parts divide one man,
And make imaginary puissance ;
Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i* the receiving earth :
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
148 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
Carry them here and there ; jumping o'er times.
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass."
In another prologue he bids them
" Play with your fancies, and in them behold
Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing —
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
O, do buj think,
You stand upon the rivage, and behold
A city on the inconstant billows dancing.
« « * * *
Follow, follow !
Grapple yqur minds to stemage of this navy.
♦ ♦ ■ ♦ ♦ ♦
Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege ;
-» * * 4 » *
Still be kind,
And eke out our performance with* your mind."
In the prologue of the 'last act there is a very noticeable
phrase :
"But now behold.
In the quick forge and working-house of thought,
How London doth pour out her citizens."*
The fires in the forge of thought burnt brightly in the
Elizabethan age, and the hands wrought busily in its working
house.
*' When the cheerfulness of the people is so sprightly up,
as that it has not only wherewith to guard well its own free-
dom, but to spare, and to bestow upon the solidest and
sublimest points of controversy and new inventions," a
great literature may be reasonably expected, but the form
will not be always the same. In the Elizabethan age, with
its social habits, with its gaiety of spirit, its delight in action,
the form could not but be dramatic. The particular con-
sideration we have here to entertain is that it was not an age
given to books and to book-study. It was the age of
CONDITIONS OF THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA, 149
L' Allegro, rather than of II Penseroso. It found its plea-
sure in an oral literature. The stage exactly answered to
its necessities, and so all of a sudden it sprang up to its per-
fection. It is strange to think that one of the writers of
Gorbqduc—rihQ play that is known as our first tragedy — lived
to see Hamlet and Macbeth. Just so in Greece, under highly
similar conditions, the drama leapt to its maturity, -^schy-
lus might have seen Thespis perform ; Sophocles was nearly
twenty years old when Phrynichus exhibited his Fhosmssce.
It ought to be carefully remembered that the Elizabethan
plays were written to be acted, not to be read. This charac-
tteristic is stamped upon them. They are the result of
immediate contact between the people and the author. In
this connection between the dramatist and his audience
•
there is something not to be found in other kinds of litera-
ture. Criticism is not distant and, possibly, powerless, but
instant and decisive. Every genuine dramatic literature
may be said, in a very special sense, to be the creation of
the circle to which it belongs. The Elizabethan drama was
the creation of its circle, and that circle was the nation. The
people did not play at plays, as we do now-a-days. With
us books are real things ; with them the theatre was a real
thing. They believed in it. It is true there were certain
religionists — well-meaning, but rudely-cultivated men — who
stood aloof from it ; but the nation as a whole rejoiced in it
ardently. Let us thoroughly realize this signal fact, that in
the absence of books and newspapers, and other now most
common means of information and culture, the drama was
then the one literature of the day. It was everything to
that age. To such an extent was it so as to be in danger
of degradation in artistic respects. It was in danger of
being used for political and controversial purposes, a danger
not always escaped. In several extant plays one -may see
ISO . ESSAYS AND NOTES.
how the drama was made to perform the function of the
pamphlet, or of the modem newspaper — a function which
the old comedy at Athens performed freely. In this respect
the jealousy with which the drama was watched by autho-
rity, was of real service to its true development. It saved it
from a thousand snares to which it was exposed by its very
popularity. The very existence of that jealousy is highly
significant of the influence and power of the drama that ex-
cited it. In short, the theatre was at that time the great
centre of English art and thought. It drew to itself the
highest intellects of the time ; it dealt with the highest and
gravest questions ; it portrayed with incomparable power the
deepest and intensest passions.
" All thottghts, ail passions, all delights.
Whatever stirs this mortal frame" —
all were but ministers of the Elizabethan drama, and fed its
** sacred flame."
A time came when the intellect of the nation looked else-
where for its sustenance, and it was then that the drama
decayed. Books gradually came within everybody's reach
and to everybody's liking ; and in delighted communion with
master minds, through such media, men no longer flocked to
the play-houses, once resonant with the life and the joy of
the nation. With less gregarious habits, the quiet and calm
of the study charmed more than the excitement and noise of
the theatre. Fascinated, as we must ever be, by the dra-
matic form, modem days may, perhaps, successfully de-
velop for themselves a new species of drama — the reading
drama, as we may call it, as distinguished from the acting ;
and into this new species an immortal life may be breathed
by another race of geniuses, who may find in it the fittest
embodiment for thoughts that wake to. perish never; but
CONDITIONS OF THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA, 151
that the theatre, however it may be improved, can ever again
be what it once was, seems merely impossible.^ Our voices
change as we grow older, and so the voice of literature
changes, and the old tones cannot be brought back, charm
we never so wisely.
^ See also the paper on Shakespeare and Chaucer,
152 £SSA YS AND NOTES.
IX.
HALLIWELUS [NOW Halliwell-Phillipps]
PAPERS REFERRING TO
SHAKESPEARE.
(From the Athenaum for Feb. 21, 1874.)
IT is a common lament^ — and by many eager spirits it is
felt to be a real grievance — that we are so scantily in-
formed as to the lives of our noblesj poets — that, in a certain
sense,
**The world knows nothing of its greatest men."
True it is that they pass before our wistful eyes like Virgil
and his guide in their nether journey,
" Obscuri sub luce maligna."
That this vexatious darkness will ever be wholly dissipated,
and that we shall see in perfect clearness the forms and the
movements whose present dimness, or invisibility, so troubles
us, is certainly not to be expected ; but there is good reason
for hoping that the obscurity may be in some degree at least
diminished, the shrouding clouds pierced by some few rays
of light, and those coveted outlines discerned, if not dis-
tinctly, yet somewhat less hazily. With regard to Chaucer,
the discoveries lately made, and now making at the Record
Office — of which accounts have appeared from time to time
in our columns — this hope is in the very act of realization.
The mists that surrounded him are growing thinner, and so
he seems nearer to us and better knowable. Still more
cheering is it to have grounds for believing that as to Shake-
PAPERS REFERRING TO SHAKESPEARE, 153
speare, too, 'fresh facts may be forthcoming. It is certain
that all the sources of information about him are not ex-
hausted. The statement of Steevens is no longer true, if,
indeed, it was ever true. " All that is known with any de-
gree of certainty concerning Shakespeare," wrote that pe-
remptory commentator, " is that he was born at Stratford-
upon-Avon; married, and had children there; went to
London, where he commenced actor, and wrote poems and
plays ; returned to Stratford, made his will, died, and was
buried." The ceaseless industry of Malon^ and his fellows
has added fact to fact, till what has been gained from ob-
livion is of no contemptible amount. It is possible that yet
greater additions may be made. There may be lurking in
the comer of some library, public or private, or in some
not yet finally sifted repository of national documents, still
fuller illustrations of what may well be a central interest with
all English-speaking peoples. If ever — to echo words of
Malone's — ^if ever the office books of Tilney and Sir George
Buc should be found ! Tilney and Sir George Buc were
Masters of the Revels before Sir Henry Herbert; and if
ever their official records should be discovered, it is pro-
bable the dates of Shakespeare's plays would be conclusively
settled, and we should know for a certainty what was the
progress of his art, and could study at our leisure his splen-
did growth. And it is easy to conjecture other fountains of
information that may sooner or later be opened. Of some,
indeed, there are already rumours, of which we hope in due
time to give good account. Of course these investigations
as to the biography of the supreme dramatist are not to be
regarded as the final and highest Shakespearian work. They
are only means to ati end. But they are means of very con-
siderable value, and every genuine student of Shakespeare
will be thoroughly grateful for any enlargement of them.
154 £SSA YS AND NOISES,
This line of Shakespearian study is not likely to be
neglected or ill followed whilst we have amongst us one so
ardent and so able to pursue it as Mr. Halliwell. What
we have specially to announce in this paper is a fresh dis-
covery made by him, which, partly at the instance of Mr.
Fumivall, the director of the "New Shakspere Society,"
as we gather from the " note " prefixed to the copy now,
thanks to Mr. Halli well's courtesy, before us, he has con-
siderately decided to place at once within the reach of those
who may care for it.
And who will not care for it ? The mere occurrence of
Shakespeare's name is enough to. make any Elizabethan
document or book interesting ; and here we have a series of
papers concerning the theatrical company to which he be-
longed, and in one of them an account of his first belonging
to it.
" Nearly four years," says the ** note," " have elapsed since
the day on Which in search of materials for a work on the
Life of Shakespeare, it was my good fortune to discover a
remarkable series of documents respecting the Globe and
Blackfriars, in which the nature of the poet's connection with
those two theatres was for the first time satisfactorily ascer-
tained. It was my intention to have published these manu-
scripts long since, and in fact some progress in the compo-
sition of my new work had been made, when circumstances
enforced almost exclusive attention to other matters
In the summer of 1870, by the kind permission of the autho-
rities of the Lord Chamberlain's Office, I was enabled to
examine all the books therein preserved, with liberty to copy
any documents relating to the early English stage
Amongst the miscellaneous records was a small thin folio
manuscript, bearing the title oi Presentations and Warrants in
the years 1 63 1, 1 63 2, &c* Upon looking it ovei*, I could hardly
PAPERS REFERRING TO SHAKESPEARE,
155
believe my eyes when coming across a list of shareholders
in the Blackfriars and Globe theatres, with information
respecting their management that no amount of reading
could have elicited from a million of scattered notices.
Although the papers were of a somewhat late date, they
emanated from persons well acquainted with the stage of
Shakespeare's time. The last petition contains the evidence
of Cuthbert and Winifred Burbage, the great actor's brother
and wife, one of whom at least was unquestionably familiar
with all that related to Shakspeare's connection with the
stage."
We think our readers will sympathize with Mr. Halliweirs
surprise and satisfaction. He could hardly believe his eyes
when coming across those familiar names, Burbage and
Lowen, and Taylor, and Condell or Cundall, and Heming.
He fairly remirids us of Keats " on first looking into Chap-
man's Hamery He had travelled mUch in the realms of
black letter and of manuscript ; through many, registers and
records had. he been : yet this was an ecstatic moment.
" Then felt he like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his view ;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes .
He stared at the Pacific."
May Mr. Halliwell's generous zeal be often so rewarded !
These papers are of the year 1635, nearly twenty years
after Shakespeare's death, but they take us into the midst of
the circle where he was once so well known amongst those
he called " fellows." The circle, it is true, is not unbroken :
the place that knew Richard Burbage, the famous actor of
Richard III., Of King John, of Richard the Second, of Henry
the Fifth, of Lear, and Othello, and Macbeth, knows him no
more. Heming and Cundell, the Editors of the ,Folio of
1623 (to whom with Richard Burbage, the poet gave and
156 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
bequeathed " xxvis. viiid. a peece to buy them rings,") are
gone ; Kempe, the Launcelot and Touchstone of his day,
has joined his famous comrade in the other world; but
there yet survive many with whom Shakespeare was once,
intimate, and those who had departed are still represented.
There is Cuthbert Burbage, the great actor's brother ; and
the great actor's wife Winifred (now married to the actor
Robinson), and his son William; Mrs. Cundall, widow of
the Henry of the WilJ ; William, son of John Heming ; and
besides these relics, there is Lowen, one of the chief of the
King's players after Heming and Burbage had passed away ;
and Taylor, a famous actor in his time, the original performer
of Hamlet ; and Swanston and Shanks, who had probably
many a time trod the boards along with the author, whose
association with them is a warrant for their immortality.-
These papers, six in number, with a closing note by the
original receiver of them, all relate to one and the same matter.
Five of them are petitions and counter-petitions, addressed
to the Lord Chamberlain of His Majesty's household, viz.,
Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, brother of the
William whom some critics have identified with the " W. H."
of the Sonnets ; two are the rescripts, or memoranda, of his
Lordship.
The series opens with the petition of three of the King's
Players — this company was under the government of the
Lord Chamberlain — that they might be admitted sharers or
" housekeepers " — shareholders, as we should say — in the
playhouses of the Globe and Blackfriars. The complainants
are Robert Benfield (" Benefifeld "), Heliard (also Eyloerdt,
and also Eyllardt; elsewhere Elyard and Eliard), Swan-
ston, and Thomas Pollard, all names of more or less note.
Their grievance is that they do not get their fair share of
the profits. It seems that those " interested in the house,"
PAPERS REFERRING TO SHAKESPEARE. 157
or the "housekeepers," received for themselves half the
receipts for the galleries and boxes, and at the Globe half
the money taken at the tiring-room (/>., the green-room)
door ; the remaining half and the money received at the
** outer doors," that is, it would seem, the receipts for the
pit, was divided amongst the actors; so that those who
wer^both shareholders and actoi:s received a greatly superior
dividend to those who were actors only. It is against this
inequality that the abov^-mentioned trio make their murmur.
The actors, it appears, had to defray the working expenses.
They had to pay the "hired men," the supernumeraries
wanted on occasion ; to provide apparel, poets^ lights, and
other charges of the houses whatsoever. A strange conjunc-
tion, " apparell, /^7^/^x, lights," &c. Falstaff's trunk-hose,
Falstaff 's creator ^ and the candles to see them by ! They
judiciously omit to mention that the shareholders paid the
rent . Then comes an account of the shares as then held.
Of the sixteen Globe shares : —
Cuthbert Burbidge holds •Si-
Winifred (now Mrs. Robinson) 3i
Mrs. Cundall . . 2
" Shanks " who had purchased from " Hemings " . 3
Taylor ......... 2
Lowen .2
The eight Blackfriars stand thus : —
Shanks . ... 2
Burbage. .......
Mrs. Robinson . '
Taylor
Lowen
Mrs. Cundall
Underwood
158 ESSAYS AND NOTES.
The petition is t6 the effect that the Burbages may be
directed to sell two of their Globe shares, and Shanks one
of his Globe shares and one of his Blackfriars to the com-
plainants : " for which your -petitioners shall have just cause
to blesse your Lordship, as, however they are dayly bound
to doe, with the devotions of most humble and obliged
beadsmen,"
Next comes his Lordship's reply, dated " Court at Theo-
balles, 12 July, 1635," that " haveing considered this petition,
and the severall answeres and replyes of the parties, the
merites of the petitioners, the disproportion of their shares,
and the interest of his M^-jesties service," he thinks fit and
does order that the complainants shall be admitted t6 the
purchase of the shares they desire ; and he desires " the
housekeepers, and all others whome it may conceme, to take *
notice and to conforme themselves therein accordingly," and
then follow threats in case of disobedience.
But the order and the threats were in vain. The share-
.holders clung to their' possessions. And so in the 3rd
Document, Messrs. Benfield, Swanston, and Pollard, as im-
portunate as the defendants were tenacious, address the
Lord Chamberlain once more. In this second petition they
gave more minute details ; they state that the working ex-
penses amount to " 900 or 1000//. or thereabouts, per annum,
being 3//. a day, one day with another, besides the extraor-:
dinary charge which the said actors are wholly at for
apparell and poets, &c. ; Whereas the said .houskeepers out
of all their gaines have not till our Lady Day last payd above
6*5//. per annum' rent for both houses, towardes which they
• rayse between 20 and 30//. per annum from the tap houses,
and a tenement and a garden belonging to the premises, &c.,
and are at noe other charge whatsoever, excepting the ordi-
nary reparations of the houses. So that upon a mediuiA
PAPERS REFERRING TO SHAKESPEARE. 159
made of the gaynes of the howskeepers and those of the
actors, one day with another throughout the yeere, the peti-
tioners will make it apparent that when some of the hous-
keepers share 12s. a day at the Globe, the actors share not
above 3X."
They pray that the matter may be settled in the way pre-
viously urged, or otherwise, that his Lordship may be pleased
to consider "whether it bee not reasonable and eqijitable
that the actors in general may injoy the benefitt of both
houses to themselves, paying the said howskeepers 'such a
valuable rent for the safne as your Lordship shall' thinke j\ist
'and indifferent."
And now come two counter-petitions, one from Shanks,
the other from the Burbages.
Shanks in document (d) relates how he bought the shares
he holds, and what he paid for them, which came to more
than ;£^35o. William Heming (Hemings of Christ Church),
was clearly not the man of business his father was. It was
he who sold the shares to Shanks, and received help from
him " since Hee was in prison." To return, this petitioner
refers to his long dramatic service ; he is an old man in this
quality (compare Hamlet^ II. ii. 363), and has yet made no
provision ** for himselfe in his age, nor for his wife, children
and grandchild." Moreover, his profits " are thinges very
casuall and subject to bee discontinued and lost by sicknes
[/.^., through the plague, for during such visitations the
theatres were closed ; see the licence " Pro Jacobo Burbage
et aliis, 1574," &c.], and diverse other ways and to yield noe
profitt at all." Further, he urges that the applicants are well
enough paid: they each received ;£^i8o "this yeere last
past," besides which Mr. Swanston, one of them who is most
violent in this business, " had and receaved this last yeer
above 34//. for the profitt of a third part of one part in the
i6o ESSAYS AND NOTES.
Blackfriers, which he bought for 20//. and yet hath mjoyed
two or three yeer6s allready, and hath still as long time in •
the same as your suppliant hath in his, who for soe much as
Mr. Swanston bought for 20//. your suppliant payd 60//." &c.
The amount of the rent he says is jQioo, "besides repara-
cions, which is dayly very chargeable unto them." He
further states, " that he hath still of his owne purse supplyed
the company for the service of his Majesty with boyes, as
Thomas Pollard [now it may be presumed one of the three
would be shareholders], John Thompson deceased (for
whom he paid 40 //.), your suppliant having payd his part of
200//. for other boyes since his comming to the company,"
John Honiman, Thomas Holcombe, and diverse others, and
at this time maintaines three more for the sayd service," and '
that he is not in a position to sell his shares, for he has
made them over "for security of moneys taken up . . . .of
Robert Morecroft of Lincolne his wifes uncle for the pur-
chase of the sayd partes." Lastly, he hopes his Lordship
will not encourage demands of such a kind, or there will be
no peace ; young men " shall alwayes refuse to doe his
Majesty service unlesse they may have whatsoever they will,
though it bee other men's estates."
Next comes the most important document of the collec-
tion, the counter-petition of the Burbages — " Cutbert Bur-
bage, and Winnifred his brother's wife [Robinson, who had
married her, is quietly ignored], and William his sonne."
The general drift of this paper coincides with that of the
preceding. It is urged that the complainants ought to be
content with their present havings, &c. ; but the tone of
the documents is such as befits a family of such theatrical
eminence as that of the writers. They are ** the old family
of the stage." " The father of us ... . was the first builder
of playhouses." They speak of the complainants as " men
PAPERS REFERRING TO SHAKESPEARE, i6i
soe soone shot up," and as " these new men that were never
bred from children in the King's service " (was not Pollard
so ? see above) ; and grow genuinely indignant at the thought
of the proposed outrage. The passage of the utmost in-
terest in their paper, and in the whole collection, is that in
which they sketch the history of the theatres and of the
company.
" The father of us, Cutbert and Richard Burbage, was the
first builder of playhouses, and was himsclfe in his younger
yeeres a player. The Theater he *built with many hundred
poundes taken up at interest The players that Hvd in those
first times had only the profitts arising from the dores, but
now the players receave all the comings in at* the dores to
themselves, and halfe the galleries from the houskeepers.
Hee built this house upon leased ground by which means
the landlord and hee had a great suite in law, and by his
death the like troubles fell on us his sonnes. Wee then be-
thought us of altering firom thence, and at like expense built
the Globe, with more summes of money taken up at interest
which lay heavy on us many yeeres : and to ourselves we
jo)med those deserveing men, Shakspere, Hemings, Condall,
PhUlips, and others, partners in the profittes of that they
call the House, but makeing the leases for twenty-one yeeres
hath beene the destruction of ourselves and others, for they
dying at the expiration of three or four yeeres of their lease^
the subsequent yeeres became dissolved to strangers as by
marrying with their widdowes and the like by their children.
Thus Right Honorable as concerning the Globe, where wee
ourselves are but lessees. Now for the Blackfriers that is our
inheritance ; our father purchased it at extreame rates and
made it into a playhouse with great charge and treble,
which after was leased out to one Evans, that first sett up the
boyes commonly called the Queenje's Majesties Children of
M
i62 ESSA YS AND NOTES. •
the Chappell. In processe of time, the boyes growing up to
bee men, which were Underwood, Field, Ostler, and were
taken to strengthen the King's service, and the more to
strengthen the service, the boyes dayly. wearing out, it was
considered that house would be as fitt for ourselves, and soe
purchased the lease remaining from Evans with our money,
and placed men players which were Hemings, Condall,
Shakspeare, &c. And Richard Burbage who for thirty-five
yeeres paines, cost and labour, made meanes to leave his wife
and children some estate, and out of whose estate soe many
of other players and their families have beene mayntaned,
these new men, that were never bred from children in the
King's service would take away, with oathes and menaces,
that we shall bee forced, and that they will not thanke us for
it ; soe that it seemes they would not pay us for what they
would have or wee can spate, which more to satisfie your
honor than their threatening pride, we are for ourselves
willing to part with a part betweene us, they paying accord-
ing as ever hath beene the custome and the number of yeeres
the lease is made for."
It is not too much to say that this is one of the most im-
portant passages regarding Shakespeare that has yet been
discovered. As to his connection with the stage, it is the
most important.
We cannot do more now than point out the leading
features of it. We are sure that, for exposition and illustra-
tion, it is in good hands with Mr; Halliwell. And we hope
that he will let as little time as is consistent with sound
workmanship elapse before he makes the result of his
researches generally accessible.
. For the first time we have a direct and trustworthy ac-
count of Shakespeare's first connection with the Lord
Chamberlain's players and the Globe Theatre. It would
PAPERS REFERRING TO SHAKESPEARE. 163
appear that it was after the building of the Bankside
Theatre that " those deserving men Shakspeare, Hemings,
Condall, Phillips and others " were made " partners in the
profittes of that they call the House." Now that house*was
erected about 1594; so that a certain list, purporting to give
the nanfles of the Blackfriars shareholders in 1589, or rather
the views it represents, for the list itsetf has now for some
years been accepted as spurious, are finally negatived.
Again we see that those biographers are mistaken who have
represented the building, of the Globe as undertaken by
Shakespeare himself. Further, it was not, it would seem, till
the>time when Evans's lease of the Blackfriars Theatre was
purchased back from him that the said "deserving men"
acted in that theatre. • Now this re-purchase was made when
the Children of the Chapel whom Evans had "set up " there
grew to be men. Of these children. Underwood, Field, and
Ostler are specially named ; and we know that these three
acted as boys in Ben Jonson's Poetaster in 1601, and that
Ostler and Underwood acted as men in The Alchemist in
16 10. If they were taken to strengthen the King's service,
the transference did not take place till .after May, 1603,
obviously, and also because not till the accession of James
the First 'was Burbage's company specially retained by the
King, and entitled the " King's Players." Thus we learn that
Shake^eare's connection with the Blackfriars Theatre began
at a much later date than is commonly supposed. Also, does
it not seem probable that he continued to act later than the
general opinion allows ? On various other matters of inte-'
rest suggested by this passage, we cannot now enter.
• The sixth document reports how Shanks had attempted
to make an arrangement with this discontented three ; " but
they. not onely refused to give satisfaccion, but restrained
him from the stage."
i64 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
The series concludes with a memorandum by the Lord
Chamberlain i —
" I desire Sir H. Herbert and Sir John Finett, and my
solicitor Daniell Bedingfidd, to take this petition and the
several papers heerunto annexed into their serious considera-
tions, and to speake with the severall parties interested, and
therupon andupcxi the whole matter to sett downe a pro-
portionable and equitable summe of money to bee payd
unto Shankes for the two partes which hee is to passe unto
Benfield, Swanston, and Pollard, and to cause a finall
agreement and convayances to be settled accordingly, and
to give mee an account of their whole proceedinge^ in
writing." ^
Aug. I, 1635.
* A copy of these documents is now to be found in the Appendix to
Part !► of Mr. HaUiwell-Phillipps' Illustrations of the Life of Shakespeare,
Longmans^ 1^74*
A CONCORDANCE TO SHAKESPEARE S POEMS. 165
X.
A CONCORDANCE TO SHAKESPEARE'S
POEMS.'
t
(From the Academy for Oct. 17, 1874.)
IT is not likely that there will soon be an end of Shake-
spearian controversies. For more than a century war
has raged over the remains of the great dramatist, and the
odium Shahespearianum has scarcely been surpassed by that
which characterizes rival theologians. There have arisen
from time to time noisy sciolists, who have settled everything
to their own satisfaction with an overbearing dogmatism
varying inversely with their fitness • for the work ; and a
glance at the criticism of our own day suffices to show that
this breed is not extinct, or on the verge of extinction.
Literary quackery has in fact displayed itself with peculiar
brilliancy in connection with Shakespeare. The mounte-
bank has come forward with his nostrum, and audacious and
blatant after the manner of his kind, professed to cure every
disorder ; and for an hour or so foolish people have listened.
But presently this gentleman and his goods . have disap-
peared, and some new doctor has taken his place and
bawled out th^ virtues of some fresh panacea. The Com-
mentators have become proverbial, not for wisdom. Not
that there have not been amongst them men of infinite
* A Concordance to Skctkespeare's Poems: An Index to every Word
therein contained. By Mrs. Horace Howard Furness. (Philadelphia :
J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1874.)
1 66 ESSAYS AND NOTES.
merit, and men who have done for their special study im-
perishable service ; but it is certain that as a class they are
not considered models of sagacity. Too often they have
resigned their judgment to some queer fancy, or superstition,
or fatally narrow creed. They have insisted that Shake-
speare was all this, and all that, and not seen that he was
both this and that. They have attempted to arrange all
difficulties by some single test that can only, ^t the best,
serve as the humble ally of better methods. A strange
motley group they form, if one pictures them all together on
one field. . In the midst there stands the colossal figure of
the great poet, his head rising out pf sight into the clouds.
Around his feet his interpreters disport themselves like so
many preternaturally grave boys — young heads on old
shoulders. One of exceptional vigour has managed to
climb up as far as the knee of the statue, which he is con-
vinced is its shoulder, and this conviction he is proclaiming
with wild gesticulations to an enthusiastic mob below.
Others are amazingly busy with its clothes and the general cos-
tume. To hear them orate on Shakespeare's boots, you would
think those integuments were of more moment than the feet
inside them ; and that anything might possibly be said of
his cap, or the head it covered, would seem a quite irrelevant
notion. Then the volumes on his doublet and hose ! Ah !
what a theme ! Whose heart would not leap up at it? But
it is too vast for one mind to comprehend. So men tell
themselves off for special investigations. Who does not
know the great authority on Shakespeare's buttons ? Then
his "points" — what a marvellous work that is on that
thrilling theme ! And his gloves — how that luminous
treatise on his gloves astonished everybody with its learning,
acumen, imagination ! For many people it is not too much
to say that the chapter on the thumb of the right hand made
A CONCORDANCE TO SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS, 167
an epoch in their lives. Meanwhile, as we have said, the
clouds, enfold the upper part of this huge form. It may be
noticed that the greater part of the multitude below have
been conveyed to the spot on hobby-horses of the stoutest
build.
There are happily other critics of a far different race.
These stand afar off, and yet see more. They shrink from
the dictatorial ignorance of that remarkable crowd, as also
from the fatuous misdirection of its idolatry. They are con-
tent ta study, not to dogmatize. They are thoroughly
conscious of the immensity of the subject, and would as soon
be guilty of the arrogance of finally estimating it by their
own puny standards as of measuring the heavens with a
two-foot rule.
These latter critics will rejoice in the invaluable contribu-
tion to Shakespearian study that has just reached us from
the United States. And for those others, with their crude
theories and ever-ready dogmatisms, let them bethink them-
selves, if that is possible, for no more fatal enemy to their
race has ever yet appeared.
The Concordance to Shakespear^s Poems is a worthy com-
panion to The Complete Concordance to Shakespeare^ being a
Verbal Index to all the Passages in the Dramatic Works of
the Poet. It too is the work of a lady, the wife of one whose
Variorum Shakespeare is making him everywhere known and
distinguished. We do not think we exaggerate when we
say that no two more effective and inestimable helps to real
Shakespearian criticism exist than the volumes for which we
are so deeply indebted to Mrs. Cowden Clarke and Mrs.
Horace Howard Furness. We welcome the newly-arrived
one with the utmost heartiness. It is like the coming of a
fresh breeze that will never cease to blow, to blow away the
foolish phantasies that are perpetually issuing from the brains
i68 ESSAYS AND NOTES.
m
of ill-informed guess-mongers, to blow strength and vigour
into all criticisms that are genuine births of knowledge and
judgment, and of a sound and healthful nature.
We are bound to notice specially that it is to two women
that we owe these treasuries of classified fact. The ordinary
conception of " the sex " may justly be disturbed by this
phenomenon: The masculine exploit of Cruden has been •
equalled by feminine industry. Why may not a lady Liddell-
and-Scott, or a Johnsoness, be looked for in the process of
the ages ? " The perfecter sex," as Milton is pleased to call
the male kind, may well look to itself; or> more wisely,
rejoice that fresh workers have come into the field. For
new lines of Shakespearian study are perpetually opening,
and fresh help is perpetually wanted for the exploration of
them.
** Well may we labour still to dress
This garden, still to tend plant, herb, and flower.
Our pleasant task enjoined ; but, till more hands
Aid us, the work under our labour grows. *'
Mrs. Fumess has executed her task with unsparing dili-
gence. She has recorded every word that occurs in the
Poems. Even a has been tabulated. In this respect her
work is more complete than that of her predecessor, though,
as she remarks with kindly considerateness, no " imperfec-
tion is hereby imputed to Mrs. Clarke's invaluable Concor-
dance of the Dramas. The bulk of that work was a suflS-
. cient bar to the plan I have been enabled to follow in the
lesser task before me." In another matter the new Concor-
dance is the exacter : Mrs. Furness gives the number of the
line in which each word occurs. Those who have spent
precious minutes in hunting through long scenes in the
plays, will be grateful for this definiteness. Of course it can
scarcely be hoped that the references are absolutely accurate.
A CONCORDANCE TO SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS, 169
•
" As the pages are stereotyped," says Mrs. Fumess, " cor-
rections can be made at any time of misprints, against which
it seems no human vigilance can guard, and I shall be
grateful to the kindness that will notify me of them." A
quite faultlessly printed book is said never yet to have been
issued from any press. Humanum est errare. Errata will
happen. So much must be allowed ; but we must say thatj
so far as our own use of the volume is concerned, and it has
already been considerable, we have detected no .flaw in the
figures.
It is )ust possible a word or two may have been acciden-
tally omitted ; but in this respect, too, the work, so far as
we have tested it, seems to us a wonder of completeness.
We will venture to extend Mrs. Furness' appeal, and hope
that any of our readers who find any fault whatever in this
minute directory will favour her with the information.
By the Poems are to be understood all the non- dramatic
works that are usually connected with Shakespeare's name.
Mrs. Furness follows the text of the Cambridge edition,
from which " with the exception of some trifling deviations
in punctuation," she reprints the poems at the end of her
volume, for the sake of convenient reference. And in so
using the title Poems in this sense, she has acted wisely,
though by so doing ^he includes several pieces that are
almost certainly not by Shakespeare. It was not her
business in this cataloguing to settle or to entertain questions
of authenticity. It would be as unwarrantable to complain
of her having admitted into her index " Live with me and
be my love," as to accuse Mrs. Cowden Clarke of negligence
for having excluded The Two Noble Kinsmen.
170 ESS A YS AND NOTES.
(From the Athenceum for Sept 12th, 1874.)
This work supplies an undoubted want, and, we are happy
to .add, supplies it in an admirable manner. To those who
know little or nothing of Shakespearian difficulties — of the
vexed and vexatious questions of authenticity that beset the
•
thorough student, or of the perpetual troubles that are con-
nected with the great dramatist's vocabulary — it may, per-
haps, seem a waste of labour to have chronicled with all
possible pains and accuracy every word that occurs in his
poems. The sole use that a Concordance serves for such
persons is that it enables them to find a quotation. Mrs.
Cowden Clarke's famous compilation is valuable in their
eyes on this account only ; and such an end may well seem
' to fail in justifying the means, seeing that the means involve
weariness, and painfulness, and watchings. But far other is
the estimate of such productions that is made by the student.
Familiar as he is with the wild assertions incessantly volun-
teered as to what is Shakespeare's and what is not, he is pro-
foundly grateful for any help in analyzing the genuine work
of the poet. The existence of Concordances, and the judi-
cious use of them, might have stifled half the follies of which
many a criticaster has been proudly guilty. And the age of
criticasters is not past ; perhaps, indeed, it is only now fully
come. The effrontery of these gentlemen is amazing. They
" have no bands " in their statements. Conscience never
makes a coward of them. Now, against such persons what
is the antidote ? How are we to disinfect ourselves and get
rid of them ? Th^ unfailing antiseptic is facts. They can-
not away with facts ; only let facts be laid about everywhere,
and they will soon be extirpated. For them and their kind
it is difficult to conceive a more deadly book than a Concor-
A CONCORDANCE TO SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS, 171
dance. It is mere hemlock. " By my troth," they " cannot
abide the smell of it." The appearance, therefore, of a com-
panion volume to that of Mrs. Clarke is really a memoxable
event
The new volume is in shape uniform with the valuable
"Variorum Shakespeare" now issuing by the husband of
the compiler. In point of topography there is nothing to be
desired.
It contains a short record of every word occurring in the
Poems, even of prepositions and conjunctions ; in short, of
every word without exception. The tabulation of ihe, for
instance, occupies no less than twenty columns.
" As it is impossible," runs the preface, " to limit the pur-
poses for which the language of Shakespeare may be studied,
or to say that the time will not come, if it has not already,
when his use of every part of speech, down to the humblest
conjunction, will be criticized with as much nicety as has
been* bestowed upon Greek and Latin authors, it seems to
me that in the selection of words to be recorded no discre-
tionary powers should be granted to the * harmless drudge '
compiling a Concordance.
" Within a year or two a German scholar has published a
pamphlet of some fifty pages on Shakespeare's use of the
|iuxiliary verb to do, and Abbott'5 Grammar shows with what
success the study of Shakespeare's language in its minutest
particulars may be pursued. I have therefore cited in the
following pages every word in his Poems."
Also the number of the line, not only the number of the
poem, in which each word occurs is given, a detail which
will save the explorer many a minute. In these two re-
spects, Mrs. Fumess's work is more exact than that of Mrs.
Cowden Clarke. In ohe way it is less complete; but no
one will grudge the difference.
172 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
'* Having adopted," says Mrs. Fumess, " the rule of re-
cording every word, I thought it needless expenditure of
space to insert in every instance the entire line in which a
word occurs. I have given the clause in which the word
stands, and the number of the line, and then, that nothing
may be wanting to the convenience of the student, the
Poems themselves are reprinted at the end. If in any
case the citations appear meagre, the original is instantly
accessible."
Mrs. Fumess's design is most satisfactory; happily the
execution is n6 less so. Of course it is improbable that
there are not some few errors, both of omission and com-
mis.sion. Mrs. Fumess is as conscious of this possibility as
her " dearest foe " — only there cannot be any such monster
— could be. "As the pages are stereotyped," she writes,
" corrections' can be made at any time of inisprints, against
which it seems no human vigilance can guard, and I shall
be grateful to the kindness that will notify me of them.^' It
would indeed be a marvel if every entry was faultless, or if
no claimant for enrolment had been overlooked ; for there
are some thirty-three thousand entries, each one consisting
of several words, and from one to five figures. Surely the
most "flanging" judge in the world would be lenient in
such a case, and wink with the utmost readiness at an occa-
sional slip of the pen or the compositor's fingers.
** Ubi plura nitent in carmina, non ego paucis •
Offendar maculis quas aut incuria fudit,
Aut humana parum cavit natura."*
We say that everybody would be willing to show indulgence
towards such a minute register. Mrs. Cowden Clarke, with
all her excellence, is not independent of indulgence. . But
we must not speak as if Mrs. Furness stood in special need
A CONCORDANCE TO SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. 173
df consideration. So far as we have at present used her
work, we have only found reason to be astonished at the
accuracy with which it is executed.
We may just add, that by the ** Poems," Mrs. Fumess
means the pieces usually printed along with Shakespeare's
plays. Some of them are not by Shakespeare; but Mrs.
Fumess has done well, we think, in following the popular
attribution. Those to whom her Concordance will be most
useful are in no danger of being misguided.
We heartily thank Mrs. Furness for her work. It is a
credit to herself, to her sex, and to her nation. Properly
considered, it is a most valuable contribution to true Shake-
spearian study, by the side of which much of what passes
for Shakespearian lore is shown in its full worthlessness.
174 ESSAYS AND NOTES.
XI.
SHAKESPEARE-LEXICON/
(From the Academy for March 20, 1875.)
THE time has long gone by when it was the fashion to
speak of a German as some inferior being. With us
of to-day to say that " Hermann " was " a German " would
rather exalt than lower the claims of the said Hermann to
be listened to with all attention and respect. With regard
to Shakespeare particularly, to whose highest interpretation
Germans have already contributed so nobly, one cannot but
receive with especial interest any fresh offering of German
scholarship. It is easy to laugh at certain features in their
criticism, and occasionally to wish for an explanation of
their explanations ; but it is not easy to over-estimate our
obligations to them for raising the general tone of Shake-
spearian study, and helping to rescue us from a danger that
seems ever imminent in England of forgetting the spirit in
the letter. Textualism, and verbiage, and archaeology are
pursuits whose importance none would deny ; but we want
continually reminding that for the real comprehension of
Shakespeare these, taken altogether, do not constitute the
. end, but are only the means, or rather some of the means,
to the end. Certainly, whatever mistakes the German may
^ Shakespeare- Lexicon, A complete Dictionary of all the English
JVordSy Phrases y and Constructions in Works of the Poet, By Dr.
Alexander Schmidt. Vol. I. A — L. (Berlin : Georg Reimer. Lon-
don : Williams and Norgate, 1874 and 1875.)
SHAKESPEAHE'LEXICON. 175
make concerning our great poet, in whatever mists he may
seem to enfold him —
* »>
as the bewildered Briton so commonly cries — however im-
possible may be his exegeses in the vulgar opinion, he does
not commit the fatal blunder of treating the plays as mere
nwrtua corpora, and ignoring the living soul that bums with
greater or less intensity in every one of them. And this
fact is at last gaining a full recognition. Also we are be-
ginning to see that the German school is not antagonistic to
the English, but supplementary to it, and to value mor^
fairly efforts and achievements in a line of investigation we
have ourselves too much neglected.
The more these two great schools understand each other,
the better must be the result. Undoubtedly each has some-
thing to learn from the other. Perhaps the work, or instal-
ment of the work, whose appearance we have to. notice in
this paper may be taken as a sign that Germany is purposed
not to neglect the methods hitherto more particularly fol-
lowed in this country and the United States. Dr. Schmidt's
work in the first place aims at being a complete concordance.
But it does more than the excellent works of Mrs. Cowden
Clarke and Mrs. Howard Furness : it classifies the occur-
rences of each word according to the sense, so that it is, in
short, a concordance and a glossary combined. Assuredly
no work could be less liable to the charge of nebulosity. It
may be well or ill executed ; but there is no mysticism about
it. It is as matter of fact as the multiplication table.
We are glad to say that the work is executed with great
care and accuracy. It is no wonder if the English is not
always quite faultless — e.g,y s.v. Cater cousins. Dr. Schmidt
speaks of " persons who peaceably /<?^// together ^^ — but even
176 ESS A YS AND NOTES.
in this respect one cannot complain, but may rather admire.
The definitions are expressed with clearness and without
pretence. The arrangement is satisfactory. The type is all
that could be wished. On the whole, the work is a very
valuable help to thorough Shakespearian study.
We quote one or two specimens, that our readers may
judge for themselves : —
•
** Cockney, as it seems, a person who Icnows only the life and man-
ners of the town, and is consequently well-acquainted with affected
phrases, but a strangef to what every child else knows : this great lub-
ber , the world, will prove a c, Tw. IV. I, 15. Cry to it, as the c, did
fo the eels when she put \m € the paste alive, Lr. II. 4, 123."
^^ Eke, adv. also (used only by Pistol, the Host, and Flute), Wiv. I.
3, 105 ; II. 3, 77 ; Mids. III. I, 97." .
** Eysell, vinegar : I will drink potions of e, Against my. strong infec-
tion, Sonn. Ill, 10 (vinegar being esteemed efficacious in preventing
the communication of the plague and other contagious distempers).
Wodt weep? wodt fights wooU fasfi wodt tear thyself^ JVoot drink
up d eat a crocodiled Hml. V. i, 299 (Qq. esill, Ff. esile in italics ;
Keightley Yssel, Hanmer Nile, Capell Nilus, About to drink up = to
drink ; see Drink and Up, Hamlet's questions are apparently ludi-
crous, and drinking vinegar, in order to exhibit deep grief by a wry
face, seems much more to the purpose than drinking up rivers. As for
the crocodile, it must perhaps be remembered that it is a mournful
animal ; cf. H6B III., i, 226, and Oth. IV. i, 257)."
The idea that the feats Hamlet volunteers should be perti-
nent to the occasion has, perhaps, not been considered
enough by those who have dealt with this vexed passage.
Such is. the general character of this work. Anything of
the kind so exhaustive has never before been attempted.
The labour involved is obviously prodigious; but Dr.
Schmidt has faced it boldly. Sudavit et cUsit. He has cer-
tainly won the honour to which he* aspires. ^ " Der Verfasser
hat keiner grossern Ehrgeiz — wenn es einem Lexicographen
erlaubt ist Ehrgeiz zu hegen — als den, auch eingebomen
SHAKESPBARE'LEXICON. 177
Englandem niitzlich sein zu konnen." Having thus ex-
pressed our high opinion of this work, we may now, without
any danger of misleading, point out respects in which we
think it improvable.
To turn to a few details, out of several that present them-
. selves : —
** Caiercausin^ quatre cousin, remote relation, misapplied by Gobbo
to persons who peaceably feed together : his master and he are scarce — s
Merch. IL 2, 139."
No doubt cater suggests quatre^ and editors have perpetually
yielded to the suggestion ; but, as there is no such phrase
in French as qtiatre coustriy so far as is known, the result is
- not of much value. It i§ a case of " ignotum per ignotius ; "
for, whatever be the derivation there was, and is, such a
phrase as cater cousin in English ; it is still in use in the pro-
vinces; see Halliweirs Diet, of Frov, and Archaic Words,
Is it impossible that the cater is connected with cate or cake^
cater, acater, caterer, &c., and that the word means simply
mestfellow ? This explanation has been offered before ; it
still requires confirmation.
In the valuable article on // we are told in section 4, that
it is " used for the def. article in the language of little chil-
dren : ga to it grandam, child; it grandam will give it a
plum, John II. L 160, 161." What exactly is meant ? Surely
//here is either simply the archaic form, which was in Shake-
speare's age in the course of supersession by its; or else,
the context considered, it is meant to be a piece of broken
language— of nursery English — of child's talk.
We are told that interest in Macbeth i. 2, 64 : —
" No more that thane of Cawdor shall deceive
Our bosom interest."
That interest means "concern, advantage," as in Lear, v. 3.
85. We commend to Dr. Schmidt's notice, the interpreta-
N
178 ESSA VS AND^ NOTES.
tion given by the editors of the edition of Macbeth published
by the Clarendon Press. ^^ Bosom interest, close and inti-
mate affection ;" and then follow some well-chosen quota-
tions to illustrate the senses of both bosom and interest. In
King Lear, i. i, 87: —
"to whose young love
The wines of France and milk of Burgundy
Strive to be interest d^
Dr. Schmidt, it seems, prefers to read interested, and gives
as an equivalent " to found a claim ! " " M. Edd.," Le.
Modern Editors, "preposterously interess^dJ* Why "pre-
posterously ?"
(From the Aihencmm for March 25, 1876.)
Many glossarists and concordance-makers have done good
service, but Dr. Alexander Schmidt excels them all. It is
really difficult to over-estimate the usefulness and value of
his performance. Germany has long been famous for its
services to the study of our great poet ; but they have for
the most part — we do not forget Dr. Delius and his admir-
able labours — been services in the w^y of what is called
aesthetic criticism and interpretation. In the volumes now
before us Germany makes a splendid contribution to quite
another line of exploration. The indefatigable industry for
which that country is famous has produced a compilation
hitherto unattempted, and has produced it, we think, with
singular accuracy and success.
The speciality of Dr. Schmidt's lexicon is this — it is both
a concordance and a glossary. Moreover, as a concordance,
it includes the words, not only of the plays, but of the
SHAKESPEARE-LEXICON. 179
poems. It may be briefly described as a concordance, in
which the words are provided with definitions, and where
in the case of words used in various stnses these uses are
arranged in groups. • It is not a mere catalogue, but a cata-
logue raisonnL But even this account scarcely does the
wdrk justice, /or, incidentally, much other inforniation or
suggestion is given, besides .the bare signification or signifi-
cations, and the occurrences of every vocable. Lastly, there
are appendices containing "grammatical observations,"
** provincialisms," " words and sentences taken from foreign
languages," " list of the words forming the latter part in com-
positions." To use the stereotyped phrase, this is an aid to
tKe study of our great dramatist that no -scholar should be
without.
As to the plays, the words of which are registered. Dr.
Schmidt has not fallen into the error, or at least has not
acted upon it, committed with enthusiasm, of some of his
countrymen, of recognizing all the additional plays found in
the two later folios as genuine. He deals with the thirty-six
plays of the first two folios — " the two first folios," as he has
it, — together with Pericles, For thus limiting his collection,
it is not likely that any competent critic in England will
quarrel with him. He has also shown, in our opinion, a
wise discretion in leaving out both Edward III. and The
Two Noble Kinsmen. With regard to Shakespeare's connec-
tion with both these plays, the question must be pronounced
still open. Indeed, few really capable critics have yet
spoken iipon it ; and such is the nature of the evidence by
which it must be decided, that critics worthy to be heard
upon it are, and must always be, extremely rare. In fact it
is a question not likely ever to be settled beyond contro-
versy. " The stage directions, too, even those of the earhest
editions, have been left unnoticed, as it appeared more than
i8o ESS A YS AND NOTES.
doubtful whether they were written 'by Shakspeare himself."
Another praiseworthy feature in these volumes is that they
record the readings of both the folios and the qilartos, where,
quarto editions are extant. They exclude, however, " those
quartos which the editors of the first folio meant when
speaking of stolen and surreptitioui^ copies, maimed and de*
formed by the frauds and stealths of injurious impostors,"
namely, the quartos of The Merry Wives and Henry V.j the
first part of The Contention^ The True Tragedy ^ and the
earliest impressions of Romeo and Juliet (1597), and of
Hamlet (1603). " Their variations," adds Dr. Schmidt, "are
at the best, of the same weight as the conjectures of modem
emendators." Ds, Schmidt says he excludes these quartos,
" of course." We confess we see no " of course " in the
matter, or at least in some parts of it, as in the case of the
1603 Hamlet ; but here, too, we are brought face to face
with one of the most difficult Shakespearian questions that
there are. We do not say Dr. Schmidt is mistaken in acting
as he does, but the question is not one to be disposed of
with an " of course." But it would be wrong to use hard
words to one who deserves so well of us as Dr. Schmidt
" To make the poet his own interpreter, by discarding all
preconceived opinions, and subordinating all adventitious
means of information to those offered by himself, was
throughout the principle of the work. What Aristarchus
did for Homer, and* Galen for Hippocrates, was yet to be
done fo.r Shakespeare." And then follows a highly pertinent
quotation from Galen, which is too long to re-quote here. A
Shakespearian student may certainly share Galen's wtonder :
o0€i/, he concludes, after describing what a proper exegesis
should comprehend, — t/xotye koI Oavfid^eiv eirriXde riav iwatray
s^riyelaQrj rrjv 'iTntoKpdrovQ Xi^u) iirayyuXafxevuv u /xrj (rvvi-
aaffir oti vXeIu) TrapaXUirovaiv iv ZihaaKOvaiv,
SHAKESPEARE-LEXICON. i8i .
That the principle Dr. Schmidt announces in the words just
quoted is sound and laudable there can be no dispute. But •
it may be pressed too far. And once qr twice Dr. Schmidt
is in danger of so pressing it. It is certainly not enough in
discussing any special sense of a word, to say that it* does
not occur elsewhere in Shakespeare in that sense. At times
what Dr. Schmidt terms " adventitious means of informa-
tion " must undoubtedly be called in ; for, as is well known,
Shakespeare's vocabulary is of immense range and variety.
It is always ramifying, and extending, and expanding.
There is nothmg more remarkable about our great poet
than his unceasing movement He is never as one that has
already attained perfection, or is already perfect ; but he
" follows after." His artistic form is perpetually changing.
He is ever essaying new methods, conquering new worlds ;
ever striving to hold the mirror up to nature with a firmer
hand, so as to secure a more steady and faithful image. .
Hence, to return to his language, there is in his writings a
vast nunaber of ^Traf Xcyd/xcva— of words that occur only
once, and of word senses that occur only once. To take
an example, Dr. Schmidt objects to " smote " in Hamlet y
I. i. 63 :
" When in an angry parle,
He smote the sledded pollax {fn- poleaxe) oh the ice."
(we give the reading given in the lexicon) being interpreted
" he beat or defeated ;" he says it can only mean, " he struck
them." But the use of "smote " in the sense of defeated is
common enough in other Elizabethan writings, notably in
the Bible, as in Judges xv. 8 : " And he [Samson] smote
them [the Philistines] hip and thigh, with a great slaughter."
Cranmer*s Bible has " smote " here ; and it is worth noticing
in this connection that there are several " scripturisms^' in
Hamlet. Again, one of Dr. Schmidt's objections to " putter
1 82 ESS A YS AND NOTES.
out,'^ in Tempest^ III. iil 48, meaning one that lays out
.money, is that "put. out" is .not used by Shakespeare in
this sense; and he holds that "putter out " meaHs a traveller,
one that puts out to sea ! Now it may well be that Shake-
speare does not happen to use "put out" elsewhere in the
sense of Horace's ponere. in Epod. ii. 70 ; but the phrase is
most usual in our language at all times. Thus, to quote
from Johnson, Psalm xv. : "Lord, who shall abide in thy
tabernacle ? . . . He that putteth not out his money to usury."
Dryden translates the lines of Horace referred to : —
** To live retired upon his own, '
He called — ^his money in ;
« But the prevailing love of pelf
Soon split him on the former shelf,
He/«/ it <w/ again."
It is clear, we hope, that the desigp of these volumes,
though there may be slight imperfections, is truly excellent
Obviously, the most essential point in the execution of such
a design is accuracy. It is obvious, too, that one cannot
bestow this praise upon such a work till after long and fre-
quent use. All we can say is that, so far as we have at pre-
sent used it, we have found it deserve the very highest com-
mendation in this respect. The use of " these " in " O dear
Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers," is not noted, but similar
uses are so. With regard to other matters, one is reminded
sometimes that it is a foreigner's English one sees before
one, as when a Threshotd (misprinted Treshold) is defined
to be " the plank that lies at the bottom of a door ; " but
even in this respect there is little to complain of. One re-
dundancy catches our eye, s. v. Sqimrey where the well-
known King Lear phrase is quoted, both under (i) and also
under (3) ; but this may possibly be intentional. If so, how-
• ever, the two references should have been connected by a
SHAKESPEARE'LEXICON. 183
see (3) and a see (i). It is somewhat bold to Atfin^ pilcher
{Romeo and Juliet^ III. i. 84) as a scabbard, although " in con-
tempt " is added. It means some sort of garment. We venture*
to suggest that its use by Mercutio might *serve to illustrate
the "breeched"— "their daggers unmannerly ^r<f<5r>^d^ with
gore "—of Macbeth. "The ears " in Romeo and Juliet y which
has tempted " emendators " to read " pitcher " is intelligible
enough, if we remember what pilcher means. Dr. Schmidt
thinks that subtlety in The Tempest, v. 124, has no culinary
reference, but does not taste support Steevens's note ?
** You yet do taste y
Some subtilties of the isle that will not let you
Believe things certain.*'
As to three-suited in Lear II. ii. 16, Dr. Schmidt objects to
the ordinary interpretation, and suggests that " perhaps we
have here a trace of a custom once reigning among the
peasantry of Germany, to put on their whole wardrobe on
festival occasions, one suit above another ;" but surely Ben
Jonson's expression in The Silent Woman, qu6ted by Singer,
" Wert a pitiful fellow . . . and having nothing but three suits
ofapparelj* &c., is against him. See also in that same play
(Act iii. sc. i), where Mistress Otter addresses her captain, jusl
entered "with his cups": " Who gives you your maintenance ;
and, pray you, who allows jou your horse meat and man's meat?
your three suits of apparel a year, your four pair of stockings
—one silk, three worsted ? " &c. The phrase is explained by
the fact that Elizabethan wardrobes were of prodigious ex-
tent " I know the man as well as you," is an ambiguous
rendering of " Novi hominem tanquam te." With regard to
the dialectic speeches in King Lear, Steevens, writes Dr.
Schmidt, " pleads for Somersetshire, in the dialect of which
rustics were commonly introduced by ancient writers."
i84 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
Steevens did not know, but we now do, that the so-called
" Somersetshire " dialect spread once all over the south of
the island. In Kent and Surrey once f s and s's were
flattened, a fact pointed out years ago by Dr. Guest ; see
his History of English Rhythms ^ ii. i88. Is it not rather
comical to treat " a " in " and merrily hent the stile a," and
such uses, as a remnant of Anglo-Saxon suffixes ?
Criticisms of this sort might be considerably extended,
but it is not necessary. They will suggest themselves to all
intelligent persons who consult Dr. Schmidt's work; and
they are not of a kind seriously to impair the value of this
excellent lexicon, for which we beg to thank its compiler
heartily.
SHAKESPEARE SCENES AND CHARACTERS. 185
XII.
SHAKESPEARE SCENES AND
CHARACTERS.'
(From ^<t' Academy for June 1 6, 1877.)
THE good Shakespearian service that Germany has done
by its verbal criticisms is so well known that we turn
with interest to a volume in which it attempts interpretation
of another kind. Not that we have in it Germany's first
attempts in the pictorial illustration of -the supreme Teutonic
— the supreme human — poet. Retzsch and Kaulbach are
no strange names to us. But this volume is in a special
sense represenjtative, as it contains the designs of no less
than six distinguished German artists ; and as these are
living artists, "it may be considered," as Prof. Dowden justly
remarks, " in a measure to represent the contemporary art-
movement of that country. Munich must be regarded as
the centre around which the artists whose work appears in
this volume are grouped ; but each has his own distinctive
traits, and they have been brought under the influence —
one in Rome, aribther in Paris, a third in the Dresden gal-
leries — of various art-methods, ideas, and traditions."
Certainly, in England, our comprehension of Shakespeare
^ Shakespeare Scenes and Charcu:ters, A Series of Illustrations de-
signed by Adams, Hofmann, Makart, Pecht, Schwoerer, and Spiess ;
engraved on steel by Barkel, Bauer, Goldberg, Raab, and Schmidt ;
with Ebcplanatory Text selected and arranged by Prof. E. Dowden,
LrL.D., Author of " Shakspere ; a Study of his Mind and Art." (Lon-
don : Macmillan and Co., 1876.)
. i86 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
is not very seriously indebted to the painter's art: Occa-
sional caricatures appear on the walls of the -Royal Academy
which we find connected in the catalogue with scenes from
the plays. And there are in the National Gallery one or
two pictures that deserve to be spoken of in a more respect-
ful manner. But, on the whole, we have not much in this
line to thank our painters for. What shall be said of the •
volume before us ? Do we finci in Hofmann, or any one of
his fellows, any adequate intelligence and power? In many
ways these designs merit very high praise. They evidence
abundantly careful, conscientious, scholarly, accurate, refined
workmanship. They are the fruits of no superficial or devo-
tionless study. Few Shakespearian students may not derive
help from them in conceiving the mere externals of the lives
they exhibit ; and, what is more, few will rise from the in-
spection of them without a deepened, if an unsatisfied, in-
terest in those lives. A thoughtful picture, however far it
may be from correspondence with our own ideal, may yet be
stimulating and serviceable ; and these may be described as
thoughtful, as well as learned, pictures. Whether in other
important respects they gan be pronounced successful may
be doubted. They seem to us deficient, or inclined to be
deficient, in humour, in sprightliness, in passion, and at
times in grace ; and we turn from them to the originals as
we see them, with a wonder at the difference.
"And tliat*s your Venus ! — whence we turn
To yonder girl that fords the burn."
Take Adams's Falstaff in his illustration of the famous scene
at the Boar's Head, where the fat Knight recounts his adven-
tures at Gadshill. The other figures are satisfactory enough
— Poins and Peto grinning delightedly at the lies that flow
so readily, and Bardolph gazing at their author with the.
SHAKESPEARE SCENES AND CHARACTERS, 187
admiration that afterwar/ls made him say : " Would I were
with him, wheresome'er he is, either in heaven or in hell."
But can that be Falstaff ? Could that face, which might
Serve with slight modification for Chaucer's Franklin, be-
long to the immortal wit? The "gross fat man" might
have looked so respectable once perhaps^in that golden
age when he was ** virtuous enough, swore little, diced not
above seven times a week." But it would be insulting, not
** chaff," to call such a personage " that old whitebearded
Satan." (His beard is, in fact, denied him.) Quite different,
but not more successful, we think, is Makart's portrait in his
illustration oi \!iMt Merry Wives. It is, indeed, something
repulsive, and such as to make the whole affair incredible.
(Mrs. Ford's left foot in this design seems to.stand in a very
odd relation to her body.) As to sprightliness, take Adam's
Beatrice. It is a somewhat solid figure, with lack-sparkle
eyes so far as can be seen, " sober, steadfast, and demure,"
** la pensierosa," not " I'allegra." And so Schworer's Puck,
that " shrewd and knavish " sprite " — that " merry wanderer
of the night," who ** jests to Oberon and makes him smile,"
appears as a sad-faced youth, who might be placing a flower
on Titania's deathrchilled brow instead of playing some wild
trick as she sleeps. As to intensity and passion, we must
often cry " not content." Take, for instance, the two illus-
trations of KingJohUy both by Adams. His Constance does
not wildly abandon herself to her sorrow. She seems look-
ing round to see what others are doing— "perhaps to see
whether the kings are coming to bow to her throne — instead
of lying
*' At random, carelessly diffused,
With languished head unpropt,
As one past hope abandoned,
And by himself given over."
As for the scene between Hubert and Arthur, it is for all the
i88 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
world like an interview between a small patient and a some-
what grim dentist Hubert, a most resolute-looking Teuton,
has placed his left hand on the bo/s head, to hold it back
and to incline it ; in his right he holds an instrument of a
curious shape — really, we suppose, an eye-gouge, but which
at the first glance may well pass for something much more
familiar. For gracefulness, what a plentiful lack of it in
Pecht's illustration of 2 Henry IV, iv. 5, when the dying
king gives his son ** the very latest counsel that ever he will
breathe." Hal, negligently yet awkwardly leaning on the
table where rests the crown, with his left hand upon his hip,
by no means allures us. We wish the hinges of his knees,
alsq those of his back, were morei " pregnant." We doubt
whether he is listening to those last paternal advices. His
heart must be with his eyes — ^far away, not perhaps at the
Boar's Head, but across the seas perchance, in France. But
surely it ought to be in the chamber with that poor " shaken,"
care-worn, conscience-pricked figure, which is rapidly going
" into the earth." So in Spiess' tomb-scene firom Romeo and
Juliet^ there is something grotesque in the form of Tybalt —
or is it Paris ? — with his head propped up against the marble
whereon Juliet has been laid ; nor do we think Romeo will
attract many admirers. He was, it seems, a very " plain '*"
young man, with thick matted hair.
As to the letterpress that accompanies the illustrations,
its selection and arrangement could scarcely have been en-
trusted to fitter hands than Prof. Dowden's, so wide is his
acquaintance with Shakespearian literature both abroad and
at home, and so tolerant and at the same time discriminating
is his judgment. In this respect certainly the volume is
eminently representative not of England only, or of Germany
only, but of both these countries, and America and France
to boot. Such a cnticdl floriiegium was well worth marking,
and we thank Prof. Dowden for making it.
DRAMATIC WORKS OF WILUAM SHAKESPEARE. 189
■ XIII.
THE DRAMATIC WORKS OF WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE.*
(From the Academy for April 8, 1876.)
IT may seem at first an idle paradox to say that there is a
great want of a readable edition of Shakespeare, and
also of the Bible, if without offence we may mention together
works of such different interest and position. And yet is it
not so ? Commonly the form is double-columned, and the
type small. Probably no two volumes have so much to
answer for in respect of the weak eyesight which is said to
be becoming more and more prevalent. A fine result of
Biblical and of dramatic, studies, if they are to make us
blind ! Why should it always be thought of such impor-
tance to compress . such writings into the smallest space
possible ? Of the Bible, is there any readable edition-r-ooe
in good type, not double-columned, not divided into chap-
ters and verses ?• Surely this is what is called a Desideratum.
And for Shakespeare things are better perhaps'; byt yet far
* TTu Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare. With Biographical
Introduction. By Henry Glassford Bell. Six Volumes. (London and
Glasgow: William CoUins, Sons and Co., 1875.)
_ The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare. The Text care^lly
revised with Notes. By S. W. Singer, F.S.A. With a Life by W.
Watkiss Lloyd. Ten Volumes. (London : George Bell and Sons,
1875.)
Critical Essays on the Plays of 'Shakespeare. By William Watkiss
Lloyd. j(London : George Bell and Sons, 1875.)
190 ESSA YS AND NOTES,
from well. Shakespeare, Shakespeare everywhere; but
seldom, if ever, a good edition to read.
. Of the reprints now before us, neither supplies this want,
though both have merits. That published by Messrs.
Collins would go far to satisfy us, if only it were issued in
twelve volumes instead of six, and the. t)npe were a little
larger, and the text, about which no information is given,
carefully revised 1 Even as it is, we welcome it. What
specially recommends it from our present point of view is
that there are no note^. It is certainly ttue of Shakespeare,
as of the Bible, that the text is not enough studied by itself.
We are so beset with commentators that it is difficult to get
at the work itself. All along the various approaches to the
shrine they are posted in dense array, with their handbooks
and guides and keys. It is a great blessing occasionally to
'"be delivered from these busy gentlemen — to be left alone
with Shakespeare himself. It is like going round the
chapels at Westminster, as happily, thanks to Dr. Stanley,
one can now do, without a cicerone to spoil everything with
his intrusive information or ignorance.
" Let him,'^ says Dr. Johnson (and Mr. H. Glassford Bell
pertinently reminds us of his words), " that is yet unacquain-
ted with the powers of Shakespeare, and who desires to feel
the highest pleasure that the drama can -give, read every
play, from the first scene to the last, with utter negligence
of all his commentators. When his fancy is once on the
wing, let it not stoop to correction or explanation. When
his attention is strongly engaged, let it disdain alike to turn
aside to the name of Theobald and of Pope. Let him read
on, through brightness and obscurity, through integrity, and
corruption ; let him preserve 'his comprehension of the dia-
logue and his interest in the fable. And when the pleasures
of novelty have ceased, let him attempt exactness, and read
DRAMATIC WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, 191
the commentators. Particular passages are cleared by notes,
but the general effect of the work is weakened. The mind is
refrigerated by interruption ; the thoughts are diverted from
the principal subject ; the reader is weary, he suspects not;
why ; and at last throws away the book which he has too
diligently studied. Parts are not to be examined till the
whole has been surveyed ; there is a kind of intellectual re-
moteness necessary for the comprehension of any great
work in its full design and in its true proportions ; a close
approach shows the smaller niceties, but the beauty of the
whole is discerned no longer* It is not very grateful," he
adds, " to consider how little the succession of editors ha^
added to this author's power of pleasing. He was read,
admired, studied and imitated, while he was yet deformed
with all the improprieties which ignorance and neglect could
accumulate upon him, while the reading was yet not recti-
fied, nor his allusions understood."
These words, are well worth Weighing at a time when,
perhaps, there is some danger of treating Shakespeare as a
mere platform for the* display of antiquarian lore, of critical
ingenuity, of super-subtle exegesis. Shakespeare is sore of
many another besides Theobald. To some persons he would
seem to be merely an immense tangle, which it is their high
vocation to unravel and arrange; Because they find a thread
or two loose here and there, they are unable to see the mag-
nificence and the perfection of the pattern that lies before
them, worked with immortal skill and unfading brilliancy.
This reprint of the late Mr. H. Glassford Bell's edition is
welcome, then, for its absolute notelessness, there being at
the present time a *' plentiful lack " of noteless editions in a
readable form. The only pages not occupied by the plays
are devo.ted to a ** Biographical Introduction," which,
indeed, might be dispensed with, but in its kind is written
192 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
both with knowledge and taste. It should in any case have
been revised before its reproduction. It relies upon those
" New Facts " which have turned out to be New Fictions ;
see especially pp. xiv., xlviii., Ixxxiii. And some curious
statements occur. Is it not quite a wild thing to say that
** high literature and high art rarely or never reflect their
own age " ? What do they reflect, then ? What can Hamlet
mean when he says that the " purpose of playing," "both at
the first and now, was and is to hold, as 'twere, the mirror
up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own
image, and the very age and body of the time his form and
pressure'*^ 1 King Lear was not printed in •1603, and for
certain reasons could not possibly have been so. Th6
statement on p. Ixxi. is inaccurate, as Othello was published
in 1622. Richard was the son, not the biother, of James
Burbage (p. xlv.). It was not on the boards of the Black-
friars Theatre that Shakespeare " first appeared " (p. xlv.).
It should not be asserted as a fact that Shakespeare carhe to
London the year Sir Philip Sidney died (p. xxiv.). What is
" the Greek peplon " (p. Ixxi v.) ? There is in late Greek a
plural TTcVXa, and there is in Latin a iorva peplum as well as
peplus ; but peplon can scarcely be defended. Again,
Pericles, "though an early production, is entirely Shake-
spearian." What an extraordinary announcement ! On the
whole, however, this Biographical Introduction deserves
reading. ^
The other reprint before us is annotated. It must by no
means be understood from what we have said that notes are
always to be despised. What w:e have been protesting
. against is their omnipresence and omnipotence. In their
. place they are highly desirable. The late Mr. Singer's notes
are of well-known excellence, learned but not pedantic,
suggestive and informing without becoming trivial or intru-
DRAMATIC WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, 193
sive. To note in Latin means to brancj, and it is in this
sense that some editors '* note " their authors. Pope has
lately been ** noted *' in this sense, and Shakespeare often
enough. In the last century, and since, the censors were
for ever scoring their intelligent marks against his name.
But it js not in this manner that Mr. Singer proceeds. When
he criticises, he does so with proper humility. He is no
rash or lavish corrector of the text, though on occasion he
is not found wanting. His chief service is his illustrations,
and the charm of these is their freshness and variety. He
draws, water for himself straight from Elizabethan foun-
tains — does not borrow it from a neighbour's cistern or tub.
Each play has its " Preliminary Remarks," dealing with the
date and the material, and like matters. The type of the
text is of merciful size. Altogether, this is a capital edition
of its sort.
Of course offences will come ; but we will by no means
on that account cry " Woe to Mr. Singer." Here are a few
offences: his note on "Sandblind" {Merchant of Venice^
iL 2) is a quotation from Holyoke's Dictionary : " Having
an imperfect sight, as if there was sand in the eye Myops ; "
which looks odd enough through a "full stop" having
dropi>ed out after the word " eye," and is surely a piece of
but feeble etymology. Probably the sand, as has been sug-
gested, is as the Anglo-Saxon sdm (the Latin semi, Greek
4/ii), as in sdm-cwic, sdm-wis, &c. Again : " We learn from
the account of the Revels at Court that it [the Merry Wives
of Windsor] was acted before Jarpes I. on the Sunday fol-
lowing the ist November, 1604." Do we? Or should it
not rather be written, " We do not learn, &c." ? Again, is
there not a want of humour in saying, apropos of ** I paid
nothing for it neither, but was paid for my learning," "to
pay in Shakespeare's time signified to beat ; in which sense it
o
194 ^SSA YS AND NOTES.
is still not uncomipon in familiar language. ' Seven of the
eleven Ipaid* says Falstaff m Henry IV,, Part I." Again
in Richard II,, i. i : —
** Upon remainder of a dear account,"
is " dear," or " deere," " an evident press error for ' cleere ' " ?
Dear in a welUknown Elizabethan usage makes ^excellent
sense. Mr. Singer makes no alteration in Romeo and Juliet,
i. 5 :—
** O dear account ! my life is my foe's debt ; '*
nor in Much Ado about Nothing, iv. i : —
** By this hand Claudio shall render me a dear account " —
passages aptly quoted by. the Clarendon Press editors. As
to the date of Macbeth, there is no mention made of the
passage in the Puritan first noticed, we think, by Farmer,
which one can scatcely doubt refers to Banquo's Ghost : —
"Come, my inestimable bullies," says Sir Godfrey, " we'll
talk pf your, noble acts in sparkling chamico ; and instead of
a jester we'll have the ghost in the white sheet sit at the
upper end of the table."
•It is curious how commonly this passage is overlooked ;
yet it is very important, as the Puritan was printed in 1607.
For ourselves the more we study the question the more
convinced we are that those are in the right who .advocate
an earlier date for Macbeth than 16 10. As this play attracts
so much attention just now, we may just remind our readers
that there is another allusion to Banquo's Ghost in Beau-
mont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle, pro-
duced in 161 1, when Jasper, entering "with his face
mealed," thus addresses Venturewell : —
** When t'lou art at thy table with thy friends,
Merry in heart, and filled with swelling wine,
DRAMATIQ WORKS OF^ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, 195
I'll come in midst of all thy pride and mirth,
Invisible to all men but thyself."
It should not be forgotten that Mr. Collier has found a
Ballad of Macdobeth entered in the Stationers' Company
Registers, Aug. 27, 1596. Singer does refer to the passage
in Kemp's Nine Dales Wonder^ printed 1600, where this
ballad is mentioned. The words, which he might have
quoted, are these : —
" I met a proper upright youth, onely for .a little stooping
in the shoulders, all hart to the heele, a penny Poet, whose
first making was the miserable Stolne story of Macdoel, or
Macdobeth, or Macsomewhat, for I am sure a Mac it was,
though I never had the maw to see it."
Of whom or how was the story stolen, we wonder. See Mr.
Fumess's encyclopaedic edition of Macbeth^ p. 387. In
Act i. sc. 3, Singer rightly reads " weird sisters " in spite
of Hunter's protest. " The old copy," he notes, " has * way-
ward,' probably to indicate the pronunciation ; it is also
used by Heywood."
• The " Lifie " which occupies some hundred pages of the
first volume of this, reissue is written by Mr. W. Watkiss
Lloyd. The critical essays by the same author, which
appeared in the original edition, are now reprinted in a
separate volume, uniform with the plays. iSir. Lloyd is a
well-known worker in yarious fields — in the Periklean no
less than the Elizabethan. What he does is always well
done — is always done freshly, thoughtfully, in a scholarly
spirit. • His style, it must be observed, is often unfortunate,
so that one does not always quite understand what he
means to say; and there are lines of criticism which he
scarcely recognizes; but, on the whole, his volume of
Essays is to be cordially recommended — if only the print
were not so cruelly small. On the whole, they are really
4
196 JSSSA VS AND NOTES.
remarkable for their learning, breadth, and general sound-
ness. In discussing the dates of the plays, for instance,
though we by no means always agree with his conclusions,
yet we cannot but admire the comprehensive intelligence of
his method. His culture delivers him from the vigorous
one-sidedness that deforms so much Shakespearian criticism.
He sees the necessity of entertaining several considerations
instead of blindly abandoning himself to a single one. With
such a volume within reach, and with sucK another as Pro-
fessor Dowden's recent work, Shakespearian studjr may be
fairly hoped to make some better progress.
For its size, there is, perhaps, no Life of Shakespeare that
gives more information. We think a more minute investi-
gation would convince Mr. Lloyd that " Willy " in Spenser's
Tears of the Muses can scarcely be Shakespeare; that he is
not justified in giving 1594 as the date of the Action lines
in Colin Clouts Come Home Again ; that the composition of
the Roman plays does not belong to the latter years of the
poet's life — he is speaking of the years 16 14- 15 — iox Julius
Ccesar is referred to, as Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps has dis-
covered, in 1 60 1, and Antony and Cleopatra is entered in
the books of the Stationers' Company in 1608 ; (but it must
be mentioned that Mr. Lloyd in his Essay on the play dis-
putes the latter fact, we think ineffectually, though he allows
it in his Julius Ccesar essay ;) and there are other such
matters ; yet, on the whole, the Life is conspicuously well-
informed and complete.
We will end with one or two notes on \ht. Essays: —
" * Ariel' is without capacity of sympathetic affection in any
form ; can recognize the compassionable* as an object of in-
tellect, but knows no touch of the appropriate sentiment;
and for aught that can be inferred, would be equally in-
capable of personal hatred." Is this estimate quite compa-
DRAMATIC WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 197
tible with the spirit's wistful cry " Do you love me, master?
no ? " {Tempest^ iv. i, 48)? Mr. Lloyd considers the name
Sycorax to be a softened form of Psychorrhex (>/wxo/of)^{),
heartbreaker ; but rather, we think, it is contracted from
. rvoropa^, derived from trvq and jco^af.^ In his remarks on
the Two Gentlemen of Verona Mr. Lloyd accounts for " the
alacrity of" Valentine's " renunciation of all previous rights
in the blushing damsel who has no word of recognition or
gratitude to greet him with " by casting reflections on the
character of poor Silvia ! The scene is strange, no doubt ;
• but there are other ways of treating it ; we really do not
think Silvia is meant to be sacrificed. In what sense
would readers take these words in )^e' Measure for Measure
essay ? —
" Applying the canon of sequence approved in the exami-
. nation of the parallelisms of the Two Gentlemen of Verona^
I would deduce the necessary posteriority of Measure for
Measure to Much Ado about Nothings and to King Henry IV.,
on the ground that it contains the germs of characters and
scenes which appear in those plays ^ in perfect and entire
development."
As it appears from the context, either Mr. Lloyd uses
the word " posteriority " in a quite unusual way, or it is a
mere slip for " priority." Anyhow, we think his date for
Measure for. Measure can hardly be accepted.
^ See page 1 14.
198 ESSAYS -AJfD HOTES. ■
XIV.
SHAKESPEARE AND SATIRE.
(From tlie Amtiqmary for Nov., i88l.)
GASCOIGNE'S Sied Glass may be called the first
formal English satire. But, with all its merits as a
first effort, it is but a crude performance. The first notable
satires published, which may deserve to be ranked in the-
series to which the masterpieces of Dryden and of Pope
belong, are those of Hall, afterwards Bishop of Exeter, and
then of Norwich.
The satirical spirit may be, and has been, variously em- .
bodied. In the Middle Ages it firequently used the form of
a tale or a fable ; its most trenchant expression in the Eliza-
bethan period was the dramatic ; as, for instance, in the
plays of Ben Jonson, who is nothing 'if not satirical ; it has
frequently takeii a lyrical shape. No wonder if, in the age of
the Renascence, under the example and influence of Juvenal
and Persius, it assumed a form of its own, and there began
to be a literature, not only satirical in spirit, but satirical in
form, according to the great Roman models.
Satire is the expression of scorn and disgust and hate,
rather. than of admiration and jjraise and love. Therefore,
it is an evil thing for an age when its literature is mainly
satirical. Only in ages debased and fallen, as in that of the
Restoration, can it be so. Happily, in the Elizabethan,
nobler sentiments could prevail, and prevailed ; the time
was not out of joint ; at all events, if there was then, as at
all titnes, some cause for discontent and indignation, there
SHAKESPEARE AND SATIRE. * 199
was yet more for satisfaction and pride ; ^nd the greatest
"geniuses did not surrender themselves to merely satirical im-
pulses ; they were minded to bless rather than to curse. In
several of Shakespeare's plays a satirical element is percep-
tible — is obvious ; but it never becomes supreme. When
Jaques, in As You, Like It^ longs for the liberty of the
satirist — longs for leave
" To speak my mind, and I will through and through
Cleanse the foul body of th' infected world,
If they will patiently receive my medicine,**
the Duke administers to tl^t witty pessimist a rebuke most
worthy of the consideratioij of all persons who conceive they
bave a right to scourge their neighbours.
** Duke. Fie on thee ! I can tell what thou wouldst do.
t
Jaques, What, for a counter, would I do, but good ?
Duke, Most mischievous foul sin, in chiding sin ;
For thou thyself hast been a libertine,
As sensual as the brutish sting itself ;
And all th* embossed sores, and headed evils,
That thou with licence of free foot hast caught,
Wouldst thou disgoi^e into the general world.**
It is surely interesting to note that the Duke's words were
first uttered just about the time when satirical literature, in
the technical sense, was beginning. At about the same date
as As YaU'Like It — not to mention that Ben Jon son's plays
were just then coming out — appeared the satires of Hall and
of Marston^
Hall's first three books of satire, " poetical, academical,
moral,"-^" toothless satyrs," as he called them — {satire and
satyr were identified by Elizabethan scholarship), were pub-
lished in 1597 ; and in the prologue he claims to be the first
practiser of the art : —
** I first adventure, with fool-hardy might,
To tread the steps of perilous despite.
2cfo • . ESS A YS AND NOTES.
I first adventure, follow me who list.
And be the second English satirist."
In the • following year ' appeared three more books ; those
called " biting satires." The: general title 'of the whole
series was VirgidemicR, from Plautus' Virgidemia (a canage),
a comical analogue of Vindemia (a vintage). In the same
year (1598), appeared Marston's Scourge of Villany^ and
also his Metamorphosis of Figmaltons's Image and certaine
Satyres, But when Hall, whom Marston so Closely followed,
satirizing the satirist, boasted of leading the way, some at
least of Donne's satires had been written, though not pub-
lished, for at least four years. Thus, both Donne and Hall
cpnceived independently the satirical idea, Donne before
Hall ; but to Hall belongs the honour of prior publication.
Hall writes with skill and with spirit. It can scarcely be
said of him : Factt indignatio versum. He finds a pleasure,
in imitating, and in some sort reproducing, his Latin models ;
and this is rather his- inspiration than any moral fervour. And
the chief value of his work is its vigorous picture of Elizabe-
than ways and manners. Whatever the old comedy did for
Athens in the way of illustrating the old Athenian life, that
satire did for Rome, and with inferior, but yet no mean
force, Hall did for Elizabethan London. It is no contemp-
tible service to have helped to keep alive for U5 an age so
fascinating, so glorious, so momentous. Whoever . would
picture to himself the very town in the midst of which
Shakespeare moved, its lights and shadows, its whims and
phantasies and follies — " a mad world, my masters " — see
" the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure,"
and learn what were its daily thoughts, interests, cares,
credulities, passions — will find truly valuable aid in HalFs
satires.
MILTON AND SHAKESPEARE. aoi
XV.
MILTON'S ■FAMILIARITY WITH
SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS.
MILTON'S lines on " that admirable dramatic poet,
Mr. William Shakespeare," and a. few other of his
allusions to him, are well known ; but it may be doubted
whether his appreciation of his great, predecessor has yet
been adequately recognized. We do not now propose to go
into the general question, but only to take a particular in-
stance, and to illustrate the keen receptive delight with which
Milton when* young studied the Midsummer Nighfs Dream,
Other plays that might be especially named are Romeo and
Juliet^ As You Like It^ King Lear^ and Macbeth ; but we will
confine ourselves now to the Midsummer Nighfs Dream^ and
among Milton's works to the famous pendants L Allegro s^nd
II Penseroso ;' zxid. as we read the younger poet, listen for
echoes of the elder.
I. The chief note of JO Allegro and its twin is, in fact,
struck in the Midsummer Nighfs JDream, though amongst
all the suggested " sources " of Milton's two poems, Shake-
speare's play has, so far as we remember, scarcely been
mentioned.
" Go, Philostrate,"
says Theseus :
** Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments ;
Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth ;
Turn melancholy forth to funerals ;
The pale companion is not for our pomp.**
202 ^SSA YS AND NOTES.
and
and
" Come, thou goddess fair and* free,
In heav'n yclept Euphrosyne,
And by men hea^t-easing mirth.**
** Hence, loathed Melancholy,'* &c.
2. "Jegt and youthful >//z/y.**
" Nightly revels and new iollity,^*
3. "JVb^ and Becks.**
'* Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies.**
«
4. " Laughter holding both his sides.**
"And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh."
5. " Come and trip it as you go.**
"And this ditty after me
Sing and dance it trippingly.**
" Then, my queen, in silence sad
Trip we after the night*s shade.**
■
6. " Through the sweetbriar and the vine.
Or the twisted eglantine."
" Quite ovef-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk -roses and with eglantine.**
7. " How the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumbering mom,**
in "the vaward of the 'day," when Theseus is out a hunting.
8. " Right against the eastern gate.
When the great sun begins his state,
Robedin flames^ and amber light.**
** Even till the eastern gate, all fiery red^
Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,
, Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams. ** .
9. Observe the fairy lore common to both poets.
10. " The /«^3^r fiend.**
" Thou«/^3 of spirits.*'
11. " There let Hymen oft appear
In Saffron robe, with taper clear,
MILTON AND SHAKESPEARE, ^03
And Pomp, and Feast, and Revelry,
With Mask and antique Pageantry."
**But I will wed thee in another key, ,
With Pomp, with triumph, and with revelling."
12. ** Such sights 2i& youthful poets dream
On summer eves by haunted stream."
Is it impossible that this is a direct allusion to the Mid-
summer Nighfs Dream ? Notice the immediately preceding
words ; and also the mention of Shakespeare in those that
immediately follow.
13. " Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild."
Surely this way of speaking of the great dramatist is suggested
by a vivid, memory of a certain " wood near Athens," as also
of Arden ?
14. "That Orpheus self," &c.
In the Midsummer Nighfs Dream we hear of
"The Thracian singer."
15. To pass on to ///V«x^n?5^; —
" Ilow little you bested.
Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys f "
" I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys, "
16.^ "The ficklt pensioners of Morpheus* train,"
" The cowslips tall her pensioners be."
17. " The rugged brow of Night."
" Black-browed Night."
18. "While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke."
" The triple Hecate's team."
and
"Night's swift dragoiis."
204 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
19. ** When glowing lembers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom."
** Now the wasted brands do glow,"
and
** Through the house give glimmering light
By the dead and drowsy fire."
20. ** Not trickt and frounc't as she was wont
With the Attic boy to hunt."
** I with the morning's Jove have oft made sport
M
The meaning of Shakespeare's words has been disputed.
How Milton took them is clear.
21. " Th* unseen Genius of the Wood."
Is he not thinking of Oberon ?
" the * invisible ' Oberbh ? "
Notice also these words as common to the poems before
us : frolic (as ^ adj.), grain (of a dye), buskin'd, virtuous
(power-possessing potent), triumphs (shows), antique
(= antic), &c.
From other plays other illustrations might easily be drawn ;
e,g. cf. " Day's garish eye " and " the garish sun " in Eomeo
and Juliet, &c. But, taking together all the comcidences we
have mentioned, not laying stress on any single one, though
indeed there are several that might well have stress laid upon
them, surely we have already sufficient evidence to show with
what worship and joy the young Milton sat at the feet of
Shakespeare — sufficient evidence not that he consciously
imitated or borrowed from him, or was in any sense untrue
to his own originality, but that Shakespeare's works had be-
come, so to speak, part of his mental garniture.
RICHARD A. * SOS
XVI.
RICHARD II.
(From the Academy for Nov. 20, 1875.)
THERE is, as is well known, great variety of opinion as
to whether the play of Richard IL^ acted by the re-
quest of Sir Gilly Merrick the day before Essex's rising, was
Shakespeare's or some other. The probabilities are, on the
whole, perhaps in favour of its being Shakespeare's. As
Shakespeare' was intimately acquainted with Southampton,
who was one of Essex's leading partisans, it is probable that
those partisans would apply for any dramatic help they
might want, or fancy they wanted, to- the company to which
Shakespe^e belonged. Again, the omission of the Deposi-
tion Scene from the quartos of 1597 and 1598, though there
can be little doubt it was then written, cannot but be re-
garded as significant of the use to which that scene might be
turned. The publisher of those quartos evidently saw in it
soniething that might be construed into a sense unfavour-
able to the Queen, and so welcome to her enemies. Nor, I
think, can the fact of the play's being called an old play,
and one that it would not pay to act, be said to counter-
weigh these pf obabilities. Others, however, and critics of
judgment, may decide for themselves differently. But what
I wish now to do is to recall attention to a piece of evidence
brought forward years ago, but which seems to have been
oddly overlooked or ignored by some recent editors — a piece
of evidence which greatly increases the probability that the
play was really Shakespeare's.
2o6 ESSA YS AND NOTES,
• ••
In a report of Attorney-General Bacon's speech in the
State Trials, there is given the name of the actor with whom
Sir Gilly Merrick negotiated. It is Phillips : and unless good
reason is shown to the contrary, we can scarcely doubt that
this is the Augustine Phillips who was a member of the
famous Globe company, />., one of Shakespeare's " fellows."
In the licence of 1603 the names run: Lawrence Fletcher,
William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, Augustine Phillips,
&c. A notice of him may be found in the Historical Accouni
of the English Stage, and elsewhere.
* •
The report is that described .as "a fuller account of the
Trial of Sir Christopher Blunt, Sir Charles Davers, Sir John
Davis, Sir Gilly Merrick and Henry Cuffe, from a MS. pur-
chased at a sale of the MSS. of Peter Le Neve, Esq., Norroy
King-at-Arms ;" and the passage that concerns us occurs on
p. 1445 of the 1809 edition oi State Trials: —
" And the story of Henry the Fourth being set forth in a
play, and in that play there being set forth the killing of the
King upon a stage, the Friday before. Sir Gilly and some
others of the Earl's train having a humour to see a play, they
must. needs have the play of * Henry the Fourth.' The players
' told them that was stale, they should get nothing by playing
of that ; but no play else would serve, and Sir Gilly gives
forty shillings to Phillips the player to play this, besides
.whatever he could get."
The play's being called Henry IV. surely cannot cause
any difficulty, seeing what is said of its contents. But if any
one should think otherwise, there is abundant other evidence
to show that the play was also .called, or rather commonly
called Richard //. See, for instance, Bacon's " Declaration
of the Practices and Treasons attempted, and committed
by Robert, Earl of Essex, and his complices, against her
Majesty and her kingdoms," where we are told that, **it was
RICHARD II. 207
•
given in evidence .... that the afternoon before the re-
bellion, Merick, with a great company of others that after-
wards were all in the action, had procured to be played
before them the flay of. deposing Richard the Second, Neither
was it casual, but a play bespoken by Merick."
But if there could be any doubt on this point, or as to
who that Phillips was, it must be all dissipated by the docu-
ment of which a facsimile is given by Mr. J. O. Halliwell- •
Phillipps, in that vast storehouse of learning his Folio Shake-
speare, now to be found also in the Calendar of State Fapers^
Domestic Series, X591-1601, p. 578 — a documei^ surely not '
so much noticed and considered as it deserves. It is •
headed : ' " Examination of Augustine Phillips, servant to
the Lord Chamberlain and one of his Players, before tiord
Chief Justice Popham and Edward Fenner," and runs
thus : —
" On Thursday or Friday sevennight Sir Charles Percy,
Sir Josceline Percy, Lord Monteagle, and several others
spoke to some of our players to play the deposing and kill-
ing of Richard ii., and promised to give them 401. more
thaif their ordinary to do so. Examinate and his fellows
had determined to play some other play, holding that of
King Richard as being so old, and so long out of use that
they should have a small company of it ; but at this request
they were content to play it." We may just ask whether
the above names do not suggest that some of Essex's ac-
complices may have nursed designs very different from his
own, or -at all events from those he. professed ? But this by
the way. What is noticeable for us is that " the deposing
and killing of Richard II." is exactly the subject of Shake-
speare's play.
Considering no^ the general probabilities, and the facts
that the company employed by the Essexians was that to
208
ESSAYS AND NOTES,
which Shakespeare belonged, and that the play asked for
answers in description to Shakespeare's Richard IL^ must
we not incline to believe that the play was indeed Shake-
speare's ? Is it likely that there were two plays answering to
the same description "in the field " of the Globe — two plays
dealing with the closing years of Richard II. ?
WIL Y BEGUILED. ' 209
XVII.
WILY BEGUILED AND THE MERCHANT
OF VENICE.
(From the AtheruBum for July 17, 1875.)
AN interesting Shakespearian chapter has yet to be written,
treating of the influence of the great master over his
contemporaries. A full description of the way In which his
image is impressed upon the contemporary drama would
more truly show what his power was during his life, than
a long list of direct recognitions and formal eulogies. We
wish Dr. Ingleby's very valuable volume might be supple-
mented by a record of this most significant " prayse." A
remarkable instance of it is to be found in Wily Beguiled.
Whalley noticed how it imSated the Merchant of Venice in
one passage ; but it is, in fact, full of Shakespearian imi-
tations.
As to the date of the play, it seems to have been first pub-
lished in 1606 ; but it was certainly written some years
before. According to Malone, it "was written before 1596,
being mentioned by Nash in one of his pamphlets published
in that year" (/.^., Have with you to Saffron Walden).
Malone's logic is here a little strange. All that he ought to
infer is that the play was not written later than 1596. Neither
is his statement as to Nash's mention of it accurate, as will be
shown in another paper. It was certainly not written before,
because it contains a reference to the famous expedition to
Cadiz. " Zounds," says Churms, an over-reaching lawyer
p
•\
210 ESSAYS AND NOTES, ^
\yho is eventually himself over-reached, " I am as prcJper a
man as Peter Plod-all ; and though his father be as good a
man as mine, yet far-fetched and dear-bought is good for
ladies ; and I am sure I have been as far as Cales to fetch
that I have. I have been at Cambridge, a scholar ; at Cales
a soldier ; and now in the country 2^ lawyer, and the next
degree shall be a coney-catcher ; for 111 go near to coaen old
father Sharepenny of his daughter ; I'll cast about, 111 warrant
him." And, unless we believe that the Venesyon Comedy
mentioned in Henslowe's Diary ^ August 25 th, 1594, is the
Merchant y a belief not easily to be adopted, there i^ now no '
external evidence for jgiving the Merchant an earlier date
than 1596. Nor do I think that the internal evidence of
style and tone points to any earlier date, but this is to some
extent a matter of opinion.
The passage which Whalley quotes as manifestly imitat-
ing the Merchant^ is from the scene where Sophos and
Lelia are away in the woods together in the starlight, and
they converse in this wise : —
** See how the twinkling stars do hide their borrowed shine,
As. half ashamed their lustre is so stained
By Lelia's beauteous eyes, that shine more bright
Than twinkling stars do in a winter's night.
In such a night did Paris win his love.
Lelia. In such a night yEneas proved unkind.
Sophos. In such a night did Troilus court his dear.
Lelia. In such a night fair Phillis was betrayed.
Sophos. I'll prove as true as ever Troilus was.
Lelia. And I as constant as Penelope."
But, as we have said, the play is full of Shakespearian imi-
tations. Gripe, the usurer, is done out of his daughter and
his money, even as Shylock is, and cries o'ut : —
" I am undone. I am robbed ! My daughter ! My money !
Which way are they gone ? "
WILY BEGUILED. 211
Again, says Sophos, in an interview with his mistress : —
** To "what fair Lelia wills doth Sophos yield content,
Yet that's the troublous gulf, my silly ship must pass.
But, were that venture harder to atchieve
Than that of Jason for the golden fleece,
I would effect it for sweet Lelia's sake,
Or le4ve myself as witness of my thoughts. "
Compare Merchant of Venice^ \, i, 172, and iii. 2, 244.
Elsewhere^ —
Enter Peg sola,
** I'faith, i*faith, I cannot tell what to do ;
I love and I love, and I cannot tell who ;
Out upon this love ! for wot you what ?
I hae suitors come huddle, twos upon twos.
And threes upon threes ; and what think you
Troubles me ? I must chat and kiss with all comers,
Or else no bargain."
Compare MercJiant of Venice^ i. i, 167-9; i* ^j 37 i ^^- 7>
38-47-
In the following passage who can doubt that the writer
has in some sort felt the spell of Romeo and Juliet.
• Enter ^ Lelia and Nurse gathering JUrwers,
^* Lelia, See how the earth this fragrant spring is clad,
And mantled round in sweet nymph Flora's robes.
Here grows the alluring rose, sweet marigolds.
And the lovely hyacinth. Come, nurse, gather ;
A crown of roses shall adorn my head,
1*11 prank myself with flowers of the prime ;
And thus I'll spend away my primrose time.
Nurse, Rufty, tufty, are you so frolic ? O that you knew as much as
I do; t'would cool you.
Lelia, Why, what knowest thou, nurse ? Prythee tell me.
Nurse, Heavy news, i'faith, mistress ; you must be matched, and
married to a husband. Ha, ha, ha, ha, a husband, i'faith.
Lefia, A.husband, nurse? Why, that's good news, if he be a good
one.
212 ESSA YS AND NOTES,
•
Nurse. A good one, quotha? Ha, ha, ha, ha ! Why, woman, I
heard your father say that he would marry you to Peter Plod-all, that
puckfist, that snudge-snout, that coal-carrierly clown. Lord ! 'twould
be as good as meat and drink to me to see how the fool would woo yoo.
Lelia, No, no, my father did but jest ; think'st thou
That I caa stoop so low to take a brown-bread crust.
And wed a clown, that's brought up at the cart ?
Nurse, Cart, quotha ? Ay, he'll cart you, for he cannot tell how to
court you.
Lelia.' Ah, nurse ! Sweet Sophos is the man,
Whose love is locked in Lelia's tender breast ;
This heart hath vowed, if heavens do not deny.
My love with his entombed in earth doth lie.
Nurse. Peace, mistress, stand aside ; here comes somebody."
I might add more ;' but enough is given to show how
deeply the author of Wily Beguiled was ShakespearianizecL
(From the Athenaum for Sept. 4, 1875.)
WHAT there was of interest in my communication of
July 17th did not at all depend upon the date of
Wily Beguiled. The object of it was to show how completely
the author of it, whoever he was, and whenever he wrote, was
' permeated with Shakespeare, of which more instances might
easily have been given. But, in passing, reference was made
to the date of the play, and on this point there have reached
me one or two letters from well-known Shakespearian
scholars.
Does Nash allude to Wily Beguiled^ in Have with you to
Saffron Walden ? I was careful to say that the statement
he did so was made by Malone. Here is the passage from
Nash's pamphlet ; " His voiage under Don Anionic^ was
nothing so great credit" to him, as a. French Varlet of the
WILY BEGUILED, 213
chamber is : nor did he follow Anthonio neither but was a
Captaines Boye that scomde writing and reading, and helps
him to set down his accounts, and score up dead payes.
But this was our Gdbriel Hagiels tricke of Wily Beguily
herein, that whereas he could get no man of worth to cry
Placet to his workes, or meeteV it in his commendation,
those worthless Whippets and Jack Strawes hee could get
he would seeme to enable and compare with the highest.
Hereby hee thought to coney catch the simple world, and
make them beleeue that these and these great men euerie
waye sutable to Syr Thomas Baskerutile, Master Bodiey,
Doctor Androwes, Doctor JDoue, Ciarencius, and Master
Spencer^ had separately contended to outstrip Pindarus in
his Olympids^ and sty aloft to the highest pitch, to stellifie
him aboue the cloudes and make him shine next to Mercury''
Now, so far as the sense goes, there might be here a
reference to the play. The title of the play, no doubt a
proverbial phrase — see amongst Viacy's Joculatory Proverbs.
He hath flayed wily beguiled with himself— signifits The
Cheat Cheated, The Biter bit. The Tables Turned, the
lawyer Churms being the wily one who is himself beguiled.
Nash might, it is true, use the proverb without any reference <
to the play. He might mean to say that Gabriel Harvey,
while intending to impose on others, had, in fact, -made his
position worse than it was — the exposure -of his trick had led
to his own confusion. But also he might directly refer to
the play, and mean that Harvey has practised the trick that
is practised, in it ; for in it one Robin Gopdfellow in the
interest of Churms, his friend and patron, sets up for " a
devil," and fails miseiiably in that line.
But the allusion would not be very happy ; and moreover,
we have not only the general sense to consider, but the
exact phraseology. And it is not easy to identify the phrase
214
ESSA YS AND NOTES,
wily beguily with svily beguiled. Another form of the pro-
verb is found,, viz., wilie beguile himself ; see a passage
lighted on by Mr. Fumivall in Dr. John Harvey's Z>»-
coursiue Problem Concerning Prophesies^ 1588: —
" God, they say, sendeth commonly a curst cow short
horns : and doth not the diuel, I say, in the winde-vpall,
•and in fine, oftner play wilie b^uile himself e^ and crucifie
his own wretched lims, then atchieue his mischieuous and
malicious purposes howsoever craftilie conueid, or feately
packed, either in one fraudulent sort or other ? " But it is
not easy to believe that this form any more than the other
•
could be corrupted into wily beguily. More probably Nash's,
phrase is one of those reduplications that are so common in
English (see Mr. Wheatley's paper in the Transactions of the
Philological Society)^ and of which Nash was particularly
fond^ see, as Mr. Fumivall notes, his "huddle duddle,"
" scrimpum scrampum, prinkum prankum," and in the pas-
sage quoted above, Gabriel Hagiel.
Nash, then, does not refer to the play, and so Malone's
argument as to the date of it must be abandoned. What is
the real date there is no space now to discuss. I will only
say that Dr. Brinsley Nicholson has kindly placed at my
free disposal certain notes of his on the subject, in which he
concludes, on the whole, that the play was written " in or
after 1601."
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. • 215
XVIII.
A CERTAIN EDITION OF THE MERCHANT
OF VENICE.
a
(From the Atkenaum for Dec. 15, 1877.)
THE fourth quarto edition of the Merchant of Venice
appeared, as is well known, in 1652. Such an appa-
rition is not indeed unique in the Commonwealth period :
the fourth quarto of King Lear came out in 1655, and also
in 1655 the third of Othello; but there are political circum-
stances attending the year 1652 which, if they do not explain
the re-issue of the Merchant just then, yet certainly deserve
notice in connection with it. It may have been a mere
coincidence — it is undoubtedly a fact worth remarking — that
just at the time when the 'Merchant was re-issued, the- Jews
were beginning to ask for re-admission into England, and
the consideration of their request to be seriously entertained.
It was not till October, 1655, that Martasseh Ben Israel came
over in person; not till the following December that the cele-
brated discussion at Whitehall took place ; but for some years
previously that earnest and able patriot had been urging
the claims of his people upon English consideration. He
had petitioned "Barebone's Parliament," and still earlier had
petitioned the Long Parliament — from both these assemblies
receiving a passport to come over and represent • his case, a
permission of which he was prevented from availing himself.
And the cause he advocated was not without friends moved
by motives far different fTom his. During the Dutch war,
2i6 • ESSA YS AND NOTES.
which began in May, 165 2,. both Blake and Monk recom-
mended the re-admission of the Jews " as a means of damag-
ing the commerce • of Holland, and Cromwell appeared
favourable to it" {Annals of England^, Thus, just about
the time of the republication of the famous portrait of Shy-
lock, the question of the return of his race was " in the air,"
was a kindling question, if not yet a burning one. The
great Cromwell himself was willing, not only for the reason
suggested above, to put an end to the foolish ^d unjust
enactment that exiled from thq country a people capable of
proving one of its most valuable elements ; and some few
other of the more enlightened spirits of the day may have
agfeed with him ; but for the most part the feeling was against
the Jews. Prejudices are not easily uprooted, and English
prejudices are of special tenacity, and this particular preju- •
dice was of unusual strength. So the idea of a Jewish immi-
gration was bitterly resented. The clergy, the lawyers, the
•populace, were all at one on the subject. William Prynne
" headed the cry of Christianity in danger by publishing a
manifesto against the Jews, in which * their ill deportment,
misdemeanours, condition, sufferings, oppressions, slaughters,
plunders by popular insurrections, royal exactions, and final
banishment,' were brought foijvard in connection with laws
and Scriptures, * to plead and conclude against their re-ad-
mission into England.' The old clamour against the Jewerie
was revived, especially in the City, where the merchants were
jealous of the wealth of the Hebrews ; and the Protector,
seeing it was in vain to expect any agreement upon this
question, sought for no legal sanction to their settling here,
but raised no objection to a Portuguese synagogue being
opened in 1656." The dispensation Cromwell gave was
stoutly protested against when he himself was no more. At
Christmas, 1659, one Thomas Violet, a goldsmith, appealed
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, 217
to one of the judges respecting it ; and in the following year
the same intelligent and broad-spirited person, along with
others of a like mind, petitioned against it. Amongst the
State' Papers of the Restoration is "a remonstrance ad-
dressed to th^ King- concerning the English JewS, showing
the mischiefs accomplished by them since their coming in
at the time of William the Conqueror; the privileges which
they purchased by money, their prosperity notwithstanding
their oppressions and taxations, their ill dealings and banish-
ment by Edward the First, at the desire of the whole kingdom ;
yet they have since returned, renewed their usurious and frau-
dulent practices, and flourish so much, that they endeavoured
to buy St. Paul's for a synagogue in th6 late usurper's time ;
suggesting the issue of a commission to inquire into their
state, aAd the imposition of heavy taxes, seizure of their
personal property, and banishment for residence without
licence," &c (see Mrs. Everett Green's State Papers^
Domestic Series, 1660).
It must be allowed that the re-exhibition of Shylock in 1 65 2
could scarcely have tended to soften this general disposition.
Whether William Leake, in "his shop at the sigh of the
Crown between the two Temple Gates," had any sinister in-
tentions when he had that quarto reprinted, there would
seem no means of knowing. Other volumes published by
him, advertised in the Merchant quarto, are of various kinds,
both religious and general. Amongst them are both Chrisfs
Passion^ a Tragedie by George Sands, and A Maid^s Tra-
gedie. There may or may not have been animus in the man,
but he certainly did the Jews no good turn when at such a
time he re-issued the Merchant of Venice,
For by " the general " little heed is paid to the profound
skill and the Catholic humanity with which the Jew is in-
terpreted in that play. " The general " sees only a monster,
2i8 ESSA YS^AND NOTES,
and hisses and bates. A more careful eye observes that this
monster is accounted for — that the great poet is considering
the problem how such ossifications come to be. He is
" anatomizing " Shylock, seeing ** what breeds about " his
"heart." "Is there any cause in nature that makes these
hard hearts ? " The Christian who looks frankly and faith-
fully at this work will not find matter for exultation or for
ridicule, but only for shame and sadness. Shylock had been
made the hard, savage, relentless creature we see hira, by
long and cruel oppression. He inherited a nature embittered
by centuries of insult and outrage, and his own wretched
experience had only aggravated its bitterness. " Suflferance"
had been and was the badge of all his tribe ; it was his badge.
As fetter^ corrode the flesh, so persecution corrodes the heart.
Shakespeare, truly detesting this dreadful being, yet bethinks
him, we say, how he became so. ^ He was once a man — at
least, his breed was once human ; and Shakespeare, no less
than the supreme creative genius of our own age, recognized
in the Jew splendid capacities and powers, however, so far
as he knew the race, misapplied and debased — was no less
fascinated by a character of such singular force and ineradi-
cable nationality. But "the general" would see-onfy an
atrocious monster, infamous for its greed, execrable for its
spite. And such a . figure, seen at such a time, could
scarcely have promoted the cause of the outcasts of Israel.
" WITH GOOD CAPON LINED:' 219
XIX.
"WITH GOOD CAPON LINED."
(From the Antiquary for March, i88i.)
OFTEN as Jaques' caustic description of the " seven
ages " of the drama of life has been quoted, there is a
point in one passage in it that has not yet,*I believe, been
taken. The Justice, as everybody rememembers, is por-
trayed as
" In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modem instances."
The uninstructed reader probably always misunderstands
the word "modem;" and the meaning of "instances" is
not so easy to be sure of. But it is not this line to which I
now call attention; it is the first of the three quoted.
There is an allusion that has been missed in the mention of
the " capon," an allusion which adds to the bitterness of a
sufficiently bitter life-sketch. It was the custom to present
magistrates with presents, especially, . it would seem, with
capons, by way of securing their goodwill and favour. This
fact heightens the satire of Jaques' portrait of an Elizabethan
J. P. It gives force and meaning to what seems vague and
general. Let us now prove and illustrate it.
Wither, describing the Christmas season, with its burning
''blocks," its **pies," its bagpipes and tabors, and other
revebies, goes on to sing how
«
Now pool men to the justices
With capons make their errants ;
220 ESS A YS AND NOTES.
And if they hap to fail of these,
They plague them with their warrants."
That is, the capon was a tribute fully expected and as good
as exacted ; it was " understood " if should be duly paid in.
" But noM^ they feed them with good cheer.
And what they, want they take in beer,
For Christmas comes but once a year.
And then they shall be merry."
That is, the justices acknowledge the tribute by treating
" the poor men " to a good dinner and as much beer as they
like. But the Ihore important acknowledgment was yet to
come.
Singer, in one of his excellent Shakespearian riotes, cites
a member of the House of Commons as saying, in 1601 :
" A Justice of Peace is a living creature that for half a dozen
chickens will dispense with a dozen of penal statutes."
Other illustrations will be found in my friend the Rev. T,
Lewis O. Davies' Supplementary English Glossary, published
by Messrs. Bell and Sons, a work of great value to English
students. " Samuel Ward," writes Mr. Davies in a letter I
have his kind permission to use, " a Puritan Divine, in a
sermon undated, but probably preached very early in the
seventeenth century, speaks of judges that judge for reward,
and say with shame * Bring you,' such as the country calls
^ capon justices.' He does not explain the term further, but
I suppose corrupt magistrates were so called because they
expected presents of capons and other farm produce from
the rustics who came before them."
A further illustration of this morally dubious custom is to
be found in Massinger's A New Way to Fay Old Debts:
but in. this case the offering exceeds the dimensions of a
capon. Says Mr. Justice Greedy to Tapwell, the ale-house
keeper : —
''WITJp GOOD CAPON lined:' ' 221
* * I remember thy wife brought me
Last New Year's" tide a couple of fat turkies."
and Tapwell answers t —
^ ** And shall do every Christmas, let your worship
But stapd my friend now.
Greedy. How? With Master Wellborn ?
I can do anything with him on such terms."
Then, turning to Wellborn, quoth the disinterested magis-
trate, aglow with pity for virtue in distress : —
" See you this honest'couple ? They are good souls
As ever drew fossit ; have they not
A pair of honest faces ? .
Wellborn, I o'erheard you,
And the bribe he promised. . You are
cozen'd in them ;
For of all the scum that grew rich by my riots,
This for a most unthankful knave, and this
For a base bawd and whore, have worst deceiv'd me.
And therefore speak not for them ; by your place
You are rather to do me justice ; lend me your ear ;
Forget his turkies, and call in his license ;
And at the next fair I'll give you a yoke of oxen
Worth all his poultry.
Greedy {rapidly converted and forgetting his sympathy with
distressed virtue), I am changed on a sudden
In my opinion. Come near ; nearer, rascal.
And, now I view him better, did you e'er see
One look so like an arch-knave ? His very countenance
Should an understanding judge but look on him
Would hang him though he were innocent.
Tapwell and *Froihy his wife {astoUnded on this sudden reverse
inflicted by the consut^ier of their turkies). Worshipful sir !
Greedy {full of the righteous indignoHon inspired by the supe-
riority of two oxen to 'two turkies). No, though the great
Turk came instead of turkies
To 'beg my favour, I am inexorable."
In Overbury*s Book of Characters^ the Timist (/>., Time-
server), has his New-Year's gifts ready at Hallowmass.
222 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
How the ministers of justice — too often of injustice-
were amenable to influence, whether personal or in the
shape of fowls and such matters, is shown by Shakespeare
himself in his famous picture of " Robert Shallow, Esquire,
in the county of Gloster, justice of peace and coram ....
and custalorum, and ratolorum too ; and a gentleman bom,
who writes himself armigero — in any bill, warrant, quittance
or obligation, armigero P — See 2 Henry /F., v. i.
" Dcpvy, I beseech you, sir, to countenance William Visor of Wincot
against Clement Perkes of the hill.
Shallow. There are many complaints, Davy, against that Visor : that
Visor is an arrant knave, on my knowledge.
Davy. I grant your worship, that he is a knave, sir ; but yet, God
forbid, sir, but a knave should have some countenance at his friend's
request. An honest man, sir, is able to speak for himself, when a
knave is not. I have served your worship truly, sir, this eight years;
and if I cannot once or twice in a quarter bear out a knave against an
honest man, I have but a very little credit with your worship. The
knave is mine honest friend, sir ; therefore, I beseech .your worship, let
him be countenanced. •
Shallow, Go to ; I say, he shall have no wrong. Look about,
Davy."
" This," notes Singer, " is no exaggerated picture of the
course of justice in Shakespeare's time. Sir Nicholas Bacon
[alas ! that the name of his great son should be in any way
mixed up with any of these or kindred abuses !] in a speech
to Parliament, 1559, says : * Is it not a monstrous disguising
to have a justice a maintainer, acquitting some for gain, en-
diting others for malice, bearing with him as his servant,
overthrowing the other as his enemy.* '*
Latimer denounqes this perilous practice of present-taking
with characteristic courage and frankness. Referring to the
words of Isaiah i(L 23) — "Thy princes are rebellious and
companions of thieves ; every one loveth gifts, and foUoweth
after rewards ; they judge* not the fatherless, neither doth
''WITH GOOD CAPON lined:'
223
the cause .of the widow come unto them " — he says : ** Om-
nes diligunt munera. They all lov^ bribes. [Observe how
easily /««;/«x, a gift, passes on to mean a bribe.] Bribery is
a princely kind of thieving. They will be waged by the
rich either to give sentence against the poor or to put off the
poor man's causes.. This is the noble theft of princes and
of magistrates. They are bribe-takers. Now-ardays they
call them gentle rewards ; let them leave their colouring and
call them by their Christian name — bribes ; Omnes ^ligunt
munera, AH the princes, ^11 the judges, all the priests, all
the rulers, are bribers Woe worth these gifts ; they
subvert .justice everywhere. Sequuntur retributiones. They
follow bribes. Somewhat was given to them before, and they
must needs give somewhat again ; for Giflf-gaffe was a good
fellow; this Giflf-gaffe led them clean from justice."
224 • £SSA ys AND NOTES.
XX.
"C^SAR DOTH BEAR ME HARD."
(From the Academy for June 30, 1877.)
" T T.is remarkable," says Crajk in his English of Shake-
X speare, p. 1 1 6, "that the expression bear me hard^ meeting
us so often in this one play {Julius Ccesar), should be found
nowhere else in Shakespeare. Nor have the commentators
been able to refer to an instance of its occurrence in any
other writer." The instances m Julius Ccesar are these :—
• •
" Caesar doth bear me hard^ but he loves Brutus."
(I. ii. 317.)
" Caius Ligarius doth bear Ccesar hard,
(II. i. 215.)
and
** I do beseech ye, if you bear me hard, *
Now whilst your purpled hands do reek and smoke,
Fulfil your pleasure."
(III. i. 157.)
So all the Folios, except in the second instance, where the
Second, Third, and Fourth read hatred. I have to thank a
friend for informing me — and I suppose from Craik's remark
the fact will be new to most people — that the phrase occurs
also in Ben Jonson's Catiline, iv; 5, where Sempronia says
in answer to Lentulus' praise of Cethegus : —
** Ay, though he bear me hard,
I yet must do him right ; he is a spirit
Of the right Martian breed."
P.S. Another instance occurs in The Life and Death of *
Thomas, Lord Cromwell, Says Cromwell (Act iv. Sc. 2) : —
" CjEsar doth bear me hard:' 225
*' Good morrow to my lord of Winchester ; I know •
You bear me ^n/ about the Abbey lands."
That the phrase was felt to be difficult seems to be shown
by the substitution of ^^ hatred^^ as mentioned above. And
the phrase /i^ bear hatred does occur in Romeo and Juliet^ II.
iii« 53 > ^0 ^^f^ ^^i^ several times in Shakespeare, as Mid-
summer Nighfs Dream^ III. ii. 190 ; Merchant of Venice^ IV.
i. 61 ; Titus Andronicus^ V. i. 3 ; so to bear a grudge^ Mer-
chant of Venice^ I. iii. 48, and to bear malice^ Henry VII I. ^
II. L 62 ; compare to bear good will. Two Gentlemen of Ve*
rona^ IV. iiL 15. But yet the interpretation is obvious
enough. To bear one hard= hardly to bear, with difficulty
to put up with, to find it no easy thing to tolerate, &c. And
in this sense it is used once elsewhere by Shakespeare, with
a thing, not a person, for the object. Thus in i Henry IV,^
L iii. 70, the Archbishop of York is spoken of as —
" Who be^rs hard
His brother* s death at Bristol, the Lord Scroop."
Compare RicJiard III^ II. i. 56 —
** If I unwittingly or in my rage
Have aught committed that is hardly borne
By any in this presence, I desire
To reconcile me to his friendly peace."
where the form hardly is specially to be noticed. Thus to
bear hard is exactly the Greek yjxKvKibq f^ip^iv^ a phrase seem-
ingly used rather of things than persons ; as in Plat. Rep,
330. A : — kolX Tciic ^rf firj irkovtxioiQ yaKeirwQ Zt to yt)paq
i^poveriv ei e^ti 6 avrbc Xdyog k.t,\, ; compare the Latin
graviterferre, which also, in classical Latin at least, does not
seem to be used of -persons. We still say, colloquially at
least, ** I can't bear him," in the sense of " I detest him ; " *• I
can't ' stand ' him." What the phrase we are considering
Q
226 ESSAYS AND NOTES.
meant was " I can scarcely bear him ; " " It is all I can do
to tolerate him ;" or, to use an old verb, ** I can scarcely abide
him." Thus "Caesar doth bear me hard," = Caesar barely
endures me, bitterly dislikes me.
Ifard then = hardly, as the quotation from Richard IIL
shows. So " to run hard," &c. With this form of the
adverb compare such phrases as " speak vat, fair in death,"
&c.
Dr. Johnson explains hear in the phrase before us as =
" press," and alongside of it quotes from Addison : ** These
men bear hard upon the suspected party." But bear upon
and bear cannot be bracketed in this way. Bear upon is
quite a different phrase like x'"^^^^ <pepBiv with iirl and a
dative, and is still of extremely common occurrence. Nearer
the Shakespearian phrase in sense is "bear with," where
perhaps bear is used absolutely, be bearing or tolerant, /.^,
patient in dealing with.
The phrase in Julius Ccesar^ I. il 35 : —
" You bear too stubborn and too strange a hand
Over your friend who loves you."
may perhaps be illustrated by Lear, III. i. 27 : —
" The hard rein which both of them have borne
Against the kind old king."
In the Academy for Dec. 29, 1883, Mr. A. H. Bullen
quotes from Beaumont and Fletcher's Scornful Lady, iv.
2 : —
**Ifhe start well.
Fear not, but cry * St. George,* and bear him hard.
When you perceive his wind grows hot and wanting,
Let him a little down ; he's fleet, ne*er doubt him."
Here clearly bear him hard is an equestrian phrase, to be
" CMSAR DOTH BEAR ME HARD:' 227
illustrated, perhaps, by the last quotations made above, or
to be explained by taking bear in the sense of " to hold up."
In the Academy for Jan. 26, 1884, Mr. W. T. Lendrum aptly
quotes an old rime : —
" Up the hill spare me ;
Down the hill bear me ;
On the level spare me not"
(Another version of the last line is, I think : —
" On the level never fear me.")
Of course it is possible the phrase that is the subject of
this paper may be identical with this equestrian phrase.
But this is far from certain. Undoubtedly there are two
phrases to bear hard: (i.) the Latinistic phrase which appears
beyond question in the quotation given above from i Henry
IV,, I. iii. 70, and (ii.) the equestrian phrase which appears
beyond question in the quotation just repeated from The
Scornful Lady.
228 ESSA ys AND NOTES.
XXL
A NEW VARIORUM EDITION OF
SHAKESPEARE.'
(From the Athmceum for Oct. 20, 1877.)
TO his editions of Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth^ Mr.
Furaess has now added one of Hamlet^ in every way
sustaining the high character which the preceding volunaes
of his series have won. The amount of work which these
volumes represent almost defies calculation. Whole wilder-
nesses have been traversed, dense forests penetrated, wide
bogs and swamps struggled across. For Hamletian litera-
ture is now of quite portentous dimensions. Scribimus in-
docti doctique. Everybody believes he has something to say
on the subject, and he must needs print it. He cannot be
content to explain his views to his family, or disclose them
to a few privileged friends. Criticism, like murder, will gut;
and so library shelves grow crowded with "essays," and
" studies," and " lectures " ; and chaos seems come again.
What do we not owe to one who adventures to grapple with
all this infinite host of commentators, who indefatigably en-
counters each of them, and takes something of him, if any-
thing is found worth taking, and, finally, arranges his spoils
for our use in two excellently printed and manageable
octavos ? It is not easy to overstate our debt, if such a
service is executed vigorously and intelligently ; and cer-
' A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare, Edited by Horace
Howard Fumess. Vol. III. — Hamlet. 2 vols. (Lippincott and Co.)
A NEW VARIORUM EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE, 229
tainly Mr. Fumess^s labours may be so described. His
researches have extended far and wide, from elaborate
volumes to Notes and X^ueries. Germany and France, no
less than America and England, are well represented in his
pages. In a word,- he has produced a work that may fairly
be termed encyclopaedic
The first volume contains the text, with various readings,
and an abundant selection of notes. The second, which is
called "Appendix," consists of some thirty-six pages. dis-
cussing " the date and the text " ; of copies of the 1603 4to.,
The Hystorie of Hamblet^ Fratricide Punished (a translation
of the old German play), and 250 pages of selected criti-
cisms.
That there are no faults both of omission and commission
we will not undertake to say, or rather we will say it is im-
possible there should not be such faults. Such a compila-
tion cannot be exhaustive ; and, on the othefhand, one may
now and then wonder whether certain notes quite deserve
the room they occupy. Such a suggestion, for example, as
Keightley's with regard to ** upspring," in a well-known line
that has given rise to much controversy — " it is used," he
says, " collectively for the risers from the table, a mode of
expression not yet obsolete" (as if one should say "the
rise " for the risers^ or " the jump " for the jumpers^ — is of
so little value that we rather grudge it its place. But, on
the whole, Mr. Fumess has done his part with singular dis-
cretion as well as with comprehensive knowledge.
We congratulate Mr. Fumess on having proceeded so far
with his great undertaking, and wish him all success in his
further progress. Our generation sorely needs its Vario-
rum, The value of the old one is still considerable.
Though it has in it much rubbish, it has, at the same time,
much that is extremely useful and suggestive. But it is out
230 ESS A YS AND NOTES.
of date. Though we would carefully eschew the vulgar
error of underrating the services of the old annotators, yet
we may fairly assert that many valuable lights have been
thrown on the pages of Shakespeare since their time ; and
the fresh decipherings need a judicious collection. In
another century Mr. Fumess's work, too, may be super-
seded — superseded as the standard Variorum of the
time ; as an excellent compendium of Shakespearian know-
ledge and interpretation as they are in the Victorian age, it
is never likely to be superseded.
But that it may soon require additions no one can know
better than its editor ; for, in the course of his work, he has
been forced specially to observe how rapid nowadays is the
growth of Shakespearian literature. Every week brings its
contributions of more or less value ; and it is certain that a
more thorough familiarity with other Elizabethan literature
will yield yet new aids to the understanding of passages that
at present have a wrong interpretation given them, or, when
editors speak frankly, no interpretation at all.
The fact is, the subject is simply inexhaustible. The
study of Shakespeare is as the study of Nature herself,
whose favourite son he was. And the best of Shakespeare-
students, if we ask him, as Charmian asked the soothsayer,
" Is't you, sir, that know things ? " will reply, the more
humbly and sincerely the better he is, —
**In Nature's infinite book of secrecy
A little I can read. "
"A little I can read " — that is all that the truly competent
scholar will dare to say.
Even with regard to such a trite subject as Hamlet^s mad-
ness, — forty pages are devoted to it by Mr. Furness, — there
is yet much more to be suggested and considered. It has
A NEW VARIORUM EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE. 231
often been asked what purpose that simulation serves. Cer-
tainly one good turn ths^t it did Hamlet, which, we think,
has not been sufficiently noticed, was this : it enabled him
to break off all relations of civility with the uncle whose
nature he detested — towards whom he was filled with a deep-
rooted antipathy. To begin with, Hamlet can scarcely bring
himself to show common politeness to King Claudius. He
instinctively loathes him. What a welcome protection, then,
he found in that " antic disposition " he " put on " — put on
with so little effort, so overwrought was the sensibility of a
keenly sensitive organism. As a madman, he secured for
hitnself a freedom in what he said and did that was not
otherwise to be obtained. He could close all communica-
tion with what he hated. He could deliver himself from a
contact he abhorred. He could give vent to the bitter
feelings that oppressed and choked him. And so with re-
gard to Polonius. If the King vexed and irritated his fine-
strung nature by his superlative hypocrisy, every word from
his lying lips piercing Hamlet like a sting, so Polonius in-
flamed him with contemptuous anger by his impertinent
self-sufficiency. Hamlet could find out nothing ; here was
a miserable sciolist who could find out everything : —
** If circumstances lead me, I will find
Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed
Within the centre."
Of this " tedious old fool '' Hamlet is little less impatient
than of that crowned and sceptred liar, his uncle. And in
respect of ^ him, too, his madness provides a safety-valve.
He can speak his mind with impunity. He can let the
fire that bums within blaze out in the faces of those who
kindle it^ and such liberty is an unspeakable relief to him.
Without it he would be consumed by his wrath and scorn,
232 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
his scsva indignatio — would perish "a. cannibal of his own
heart," in the midst of the folly and shame and sin that
benetted him round.
(From the Academy for Dec! i, 1877.)
TH5 old Variorum with all its faults is still an edition
which no really well-appointed Shakespearian library
can dispense with. If the homely old saw is quoted that
" too many cooks spoil the broth," we may reply — for one
proverb may generally have another pitted against it—
" where no counsel is, the people fall ; but in the multitude
of counsellors ^here is safety." We need scarcely say, then,
that a new Variorum^ edited by one so competent as Mr.
Furness, deserves a hearty welcome. Such is the mass of
Shakespearian literature that has appeared since the days of
Malone, and is annually appearing in growing abundance,
that a sifter has become absolutely necessary. Perhaps in
the economy of the future a paternal Government may see
its way to nominate a public official for this service.
Assuredly the lp.bours of such a functionary would not be
light. We picture him with his assistant clerks, each pro-
vided with a huge sieve, finding all he and they can do too
little for the occasion, so rapidly does the heap of Shake-
spearian matter rise and spread. It is impossible to over-
estimate the amount of the rubbish that is contributed — and
l)erhaps no age has contributed in this kind more largely
than our own ; but it must all be looked through on the
chance of there being some minute fragment worth pre-
serving—a chance often proved worthless. Of many a
critic it must be said that he ** speaks an infinite deal of
nothing. . . . His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid
A NEW VARIORUM EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE. 233
in two bushels of chaff; you shall seek all day ere you find
them ; and when you have them they are not worth the
search." The best thing would be if this outpouring of
rubbish could be stopped : if a would-be Shakespearian
author were compelled to come forward in the same guise as
a would-be legislator jn a certain Greek State — />., with a
halter round his neck so that he might be hanged inconti-
nently if what he had to say was found of no value ; but, as
in the present state of modern feeling there is no hope of
such vigorous measures — such masterly activity — and these
gentlemen are in fact irrepressible, all that can be done is to
get somebody to sift or weed for us. Even such a benefactor
is the editor of the New Variorum,
The Romeo and Juliet volume appeared in 1873; the
Macbeth shortly afterwards ; and now we have Hamlet in two
volumes, one containing the texts and various readings and
notes, the other "an accurate reprint of the Quarto of
1603 ; a reprint of the Hystorie of Hamblet ; a translation of
Der Bestrafte Brudermord^ together with aesthetic criticism
from more than a hundred and twenty-five English, German
and French authors."
As before, Mr. Furness has done his part excellently.
" The public " may cordially accept the assurance of the
publishers " that these volumes contain the essence of a
whole library of Hamlet literature."
One omission we must lament — the omission of an index
to the second volume. There is one to vol. i. \ and vol. ii.
has what is called " a table of contents." But this table is
not full enough. Convenience of reference rs of the utmost
importance in such a compilation. We have no wish to
"carp"'; we are infinitely obliged and indebted to Mr.
Furness for what he has done for us ; but how welcome
a good index to the second volume would have been !
234 ESS A YS AND NOTES.
Of course it is impossible that such a work should be
exhaustive. Mr. Fumess can only undertake to gather for
us what seems most suggestive and useful ; and, as we have
said, he has discharged his part admirably. It is not, there-
fore, with any intention to accuse him of shortcomings that
we mention one or two illustrations not to be found, we
believe, in his volumes, which some Sit least of our readers
may care to have pointed out to them.
Apropos of
" Thrift, thrift, Horatio ! the funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables."
might be noticed a speech of Quicksilver's in Eastward Hoe
— a play to be specially studied by all who wish to observe
and explore Shakespeare's influence on the contemporary
drama. When Gertrude asks why her sister does not wait
on. her to her coach, " Marry, madam," replies Quicksilver,
" she's married by this time to Prentice Goulding. Your
father, and some one more, stole to church with them in all
the haste, that the cold meat left at your wedding might
serve to furnish their nuptial table." In his note to " His
beard was white as snow," Mr. Furness, we see, quotes
Steevens' remark that " this and several circumstances in the
character of Ophelia seem to have been ridiculed in East-
ward Jloe^ by Jonson, Chapman, and Marston, 1605 ;" but
Steevens's remark is scarcely extensive enough.
Act. ii. sc. 2. Here is a passage worth quoting from the
Insatiate Countess : — " Sancta Maria I " cries the Count of
Arsena when Roberts announces to him his immediate
marriage, —
" what thinkst thou of this change ?
A player's passion I'll believe hereafter,
And in a tragic scene weep for Old Priam,
.When fell revenging Pirrhus with supposed
A NEIV VARIORUM EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE. 235
ff
And artificial wounds mangles his breast,
And think it a more 'worthy act to me
Than trust a female mourning o*er her love."
I. ii. 114. See Chapman's May-Day (vol. ii. 373, ed.
i»73) :—
** Come, be not retrograde to our desire."
I. iv. 73. With this use of "deprive," compare A
Hundred Merry Tales, ed. Oesterley, p. 102 : — "The seventh
[commandment] to steal nor deprive no man^s goods by
theft, robbery, extortion, usury, nor deceit."
II. ii. 579. " The play's the thing," &c. See Heywood's
Apology for Actors, page 5 7, of the Shakespeare Society's
reprint, " Of a Strange Accident happening at a Play," how
was awakened the conscience of a murderess at Lynn, " the
then Earl of Sussex, players acting the Old History of Fryer
Francis, and presenting a woman who insatiately doting on
a young gentleman, the more securely to enjoy his affection,
mischievously and secretly murdered her husband, whose
ghost haunted her." See also Massinger's Roman Actor,
ii. I : —
" Sir, with your pardon,
111 offer my advice : I once observed
In a tragedy of ourSj in which a murder
Was acted to the life, a guilty hearer
Forced by the terror of a wounded conscience
To make discovery of that which torture
Could not wring from him. Nor can it appear
Like an impossibility but that
Your father," &c.
III. i. 65-8. Compare Massinger's Maid of Honour,
ii. 4 : —
** How willingly, like Cato,
Could I tear out my bowels rather than
Look on the conqueror's insulting face ;
236 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
But that religion and the horrid dream
To be suffered in the other world denies it."
There is good illustration of Hamlet's remarks on the
hard drinking of the Danes and the bad name they have for
it — how their " addition " is soiled with " swinish phrase "—
• in Puree Pennilesse. Nash concludes a violent diatribe against
them' by declaring that they are " bursten-bellied sots that
are to be confuted with nothing but tankards or quart pots.
.... God so love me as I love the quick-witted Italians,
and therefore love them more because they mortally detest
this surly swinish generation." See also Lambarde's Peram-
bulation of Kent^ pp. 318-21, ed. 1826.
That image of the mole — to show how a single defect
spoils everything — which Hamlet uses in the same speech, is
found also in Pandosto — a fact that is worth noticing as
perhaps one of the many signs of Shakespeare's familiarity
with Greene's writings. " One mole," says Bellaria, " staineth
the whole face ; and what is once spotted with infamy can
hardly be worn out with time."
We do not see that Mr. Fumess has pointed out in
Armin's Nest , of Ninnies — on the same page of the "Shake-
speare Society's reprint " with the phrase in " the top of
question" (which we observe Staunton has noted)— the
words, " There are, as Hamlet says, things called whips in
store." Though Hamlet does not say sO, yet perhaps the
ascription of the saying to him may be taken as a mark of
his popularity." The nearest approach to the words is
in 2 Henry VI, ^ H. i. 139, Gloucester loq. : "My masters
of Saint Alban's, have you not beadles in your town, and
things called whips ? " Possibly the quotation may come
from some earlier form of the play. See Mr. Halliwell-
Phillipps's Memoranda on Hamlet,
A NEW VARIORUM EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE. 237
XXII.
HAMLET'S AGE.
(From the Academy for March ii, 1876.)
THE following quotation from a well-known book is cer-
tainly noteworthy with regard- to the question of
Hamlet's age ; —
" For fashion sake some (Danes) will put their children to
echoole, but they set them not to it till* they are fourteene
years old ; so that you shall see a great boy with a beard
leame his A. B. C., and sit weeping under the rod when he
is thirty years old." — Nash's Pierce Penniless^ s Supplication
to the Devil^ ed. Collier, for the Shakespeare Society, p. 27.
So, after all, there is perhaps less inconsistency in the
play than has been supposed. I do not mean that there is
none.
"AN AERY OF CHILDREN, LITTLE
EYASES."
(From the Athmaum for Sept. 14, 1878.)
I AM not aware that the following extract has ever been
quoted to illustrate a well-known passage in Hamlet,
It may have been so, for the industry and keenness of
238 £SSA YS AND NOTES,
Shakespearian commentators in search of quotations have
been no less remarkable than the eager interest of Spartacus
in the contents of Roman cellars, whose raids, as we gather
. from Horace, scarcely anywhere had a bottle been able to
elude. However, if ever quoted, it is certainly not generally
known. It occurs in neither Malone's nor Mr. Furness's
Variorum ; so I give it here — ^give it as quoted by Cunning-
ham in his Handbook of London : — " He embraced one young
gentleman and gave him many riotous instructions how to
carry himself .... told him he must acquaint himself with
many gallants of the Inns of Court, and keep rank with those
that spend most . . , His lodging must be about the Strand
in any case, being remote from the handicraft scent of the
City; his eating must be in some famous tavern, as the
Horn, the Mitre, or the Mermaid j and then after . dinner,
he must venture beyond sea, that is in a choice pair of
nobleman's oars to the Bankside, where he must sit out the
breaking up ( = the carving) of a comedy ; or the first cut of
a tragedy ; or rather if his humours so serve him, to call in
at the Blackfriars, where he should see a nest of boys able
to ravish a man." — Father Hubburd's Tales ^ 4to. 1604.
1604 is the date of the first complete quarto oi Hamlet;
1603 of the imperfect quarto; 1602 of the entry in the
Registers of the Stationers' Company of " a book the Revenge
of Hamlet Frince of Denmark as it lately was acted by the
Lord Chamberlain his servants."
The "rather" and the last words exactly illustrate what
Rosencrantz says of the extraordinary popularity of certain
children-actors — how these are now the fashion. The phrase
*' a nest of boys " cannot but remind everybody of Shake-
speare's " aery o{ children, little eyases." Aire is translated
by Cotgrave, ^ An Airie or nest of hawkes."
The fact that the passage from "How comes it? Do
''AN AERY OF CHILDREN, LITTLE EYASES^' 239
they grow rusty ? " down to " Ay, that they do, my lord ;
Hercules and his load'too'* is not found in any of the
quartos, does not of course in the least interfere with the
value of this illustration.
« THAT CRY OUT ON TOP OF QUESTION."
(From the Atkencsum for Jan. 8, 1881.)
IT is interesting to note that the great writer who has just
gone from us was a native of the same part of the
country as Shakespeare, and that her works no less than his
illustrate the Midlands, and are to be illustrated from them ;
and further, that their works illustrate each other. They were
both Warwickshire born — Shakespeare of a Warwickshire
race, " George Eliot's " father a Staffordshire man. In the
veins of both ran some Keltic blood, if, not relying on their
literary styles, we may depend upon the names Arden and
Evans. Much might be said of the relation of these two
great authors to Middle-March, or Mercia, or the Midlands,
and to each other. But I only propose now to mention a
curious illustration of a certain phrase in Hamlet to be
found — though never yet noticed, I think — in Adam Bede.
It is the phrase used by Rosencrantz of the boy-actors ;
they are described as " an aery of children, little eyases, that
cry out on the top of question.'* About this " crying out
on the top of question" there has been "much throwing
about of brains." Some commentators have not understood
*' on th,e top of" and others have not understood " question."
Not that no one has hit upon the right interpretation — that
240 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
is the interpretation which I think it will be allowed is justi-
fied by the below quotation from Mr. Bartle Massey. Messrs.
Clarke and Wright, in their excellent edition of Hamlet, say
that the phrase " means probably to speak in a high key
dominating conversation." Now let us hear the Hayslope
schoolmaster, speaking of Martin Poyser's establishment.
" There's too many women in the house for me," says the
mispgynist ; " I hate the sound of women's voices ; they are
always either a-buzz or a-squeak — are always either a-buzz
or a-squeak. Mrs. Poyser keeps at the top d the talk like a
ffer &c.
That " question " in Shakespeare's language means dia-
logue; conversation, talk, has been pointed out by Steevens,
Elze, and others.
"ASSUME A VIRTUE IF YOU HAVE
IT NOT."
(From the Academy for May 15, 1880.)
THE idea that Shakespeare teaches false morality in the
well-known line —
" Assume a virtue if you have it not " —
arises entirely, not from any misunderstanding of the word
assume (Mr. Aldis Wright has surely made its meaning
plain enough if there could be any doubt about it), but
through cutting off the line from its context. If it is not so
dissociated, '' assume " needs no new gloss, but has, and
it must have, its ordinary sense. Shakespeare certainly
does say, " Wear the guise of a virtue, even if you do
''ASSUME A VIRTUE IF YOU HA VE IT NOT'' 241
not possess that virtue;" but the context explains the
seemingly immoral mandate. The guise or habit is to be
worn in the hope that it may assist the growth — the ac-
quisition-*— of the virtue. Now such quoters of the line as so
justly offend Mr. Spalding forget the context altogether —
forget the worthy purpose for which the virtuous guise is to
be worn; and, in fact, suggest that* it is to be worn to
deceive others — to make others believe that the wearer of it
really possesses the virtue.
Once sever a line from its context, and strange things may
be made of it It was Archbishop Whateley, I think, who
pointed out that, if we allowed ourselves the liberty of
ignoring the surroundings of a phrase, we could discover
in the New Testament such a sentiment as "Hang all
the law and the prophets " !
242 £SSA ¥S AND NOTES.
XXIII.
KING LEAR. •
(From the Fortnightly Review for January, 1875.)
THE plays of King Lear, Cymbeltne, Macbeth, and
Hamlet are all founded on what passed for historical
fact in the sixteenth century, or was then only just beginning
to be discredited ; and yet it is quite right to rank them, not
with the History Plays, but with the Tragedies. They are
so ranked in the folio of 1623, which was, as is well known,
edited by two of Shakespeare's fellow-actors ; and the error
made by certain commentators of the last century in putting
Macbeth among the Histories has been generally corrected
in recent editions. And the reason fot this classification is,
that in these plays the so-called historical facts do not govern
the drama, but rather the drama the facts. It is not Shake-
speare's purpose in them to attempt an accurate delineation
of events, to portray in vivid colours and as faithfully as
might be the details of a bfgone age, to enable his audience
to realize the past of their own or some other country. In
these plays he gives himself a license in which he does not
indulge in the Histories properly so called. In the Histories,
indeed, he frequently departs from chronological order, and
he amplifies or contracts the process of events as the case
seems to demand; but he never flagrantly disobeys and
neglects the authorities he followed — the current authorities
of his day — as to the leading issues and results that are re-
lated by them. He does not take upon him to amend the
decisions of time as so reported, but makes it his work to
KING LEAR. 243
set them forth graphically and to interpret them with all the
intelligence he can command. But in the four plays above
mentioned, Shakespeare does not restrict himself in this way ;
he readjusts, and alters, and adds as his art requires. The
old stories are merely clay in his hands, which he reshapes
an^. moulds with just the same freedom that he allowed him-
self in dealing with confessed fiction.
But yet it must not be forgotten that there is in these plays
a historical element. We shall seriously misunderstand them,
or at least fail to take up the right position for understand-
ing them, if we do not recognize this. It is a fact that there
were such persons as Cymbeline, Macbeth, and Hamlet;
and it is a fact, whether we believe in King Lear's existence
or not — and there is not the slightest evidence of it — that
the Elizabethan age believed in it What our latest historical
inquiries have determined about* him is not the question.
The question is what Shakespeare's era thought about- him.
In every age there are hosts of beliefs in circulation which
are of no intrinsic trustworthiness, and which a better in-
structed time will scatter to the winds ; and yet a student
would make a fatal mistake if he ignored them. . Now King
Lear was a reality to the ordinary Eli^bethan. The narra-
tive of his reign had a place in the ancient British history
then commonly received, as it still has in the less critical of
histories of Britain by Welshmen. It was first brought into
general currency by that very dubious work, Geoffrey of
Monmouth's History of the Britons^ where in a veracious .
list of monarchs stret;phing from Brutus, the great-grandson
•^ of ^neas, down to Cadwallader, who died at Rome in 689
• ^^2^, appears, tenth in order. King Lear, who, we are told,
reigned sixty years somewhat before the times when the pro;
phets Isaiah and Rosea flourished, and Rome was built upon
the eleventh before the kalends of May by the two brothers
244 ^SSA yS AND NOTES.
Romulus and Remus. So Lear was definitely located in the
first half of the eighth century before Christ. Through the
Middle Ages this dynasty of which he w;as a member was
universally regarded as something substantial. Thus Sir
John Fortescue, the eminent lawyer of the fifteenth century,
remarks gravely in his work on the laws of England : "Con-
cerning the different powers which kings claim o^^r their
subjects, I am firmly of opinion that it arises solely from the
different nature of the original institutions. So the kingdom
of Britain had its original from Brutus and the I'rojans who
attended him from Italy and Greece, and was a mixed govern-
ment, compounded of the regal and democratic." And even
so late as the reign of James I., LoM Chief Justice Coke
declared that the original laws of this land were composed
of such elements as Brutus first selected from the ancient
Greek and Roman institutions. Holinshed, whom Shake-
speare uses so extensively, is never troubled with a doubl as
to these primeval potentates. Perhaps the first Englishman
who dared to suspect them — an Englishman possessed of
learning and a sagacity rarely surpassed — was Camden. In
his ReliquicB BritanniccB^ published in 1604, he, to quote
a contemporary, **bl^w away sixty British kings with one
blast." Their majesties would not bear criticism ; and when
it dared to touch their royal persons, they grew paler and
paler, thinner and thinner, mistier and mistier, till at last
there was nothing of them tangible or visible. The day of
, historical science was dawning, and these imperial phantoms
that had walked the earth in the night-time with so positiye
a tread and so commanding a presence faded and vanished,
their sceptres melting into thin air, their crowns dissolving
«
like glittering bubbles.
But I say that to appreciate duly this play of King Lear
we must remember that the central figure of it was in Shake-
KING LEAR, 245
speare's time commonly believed in as a veritable personage.
For, though Shakespeare shows no minute observance of the
traditional tale, yet he by no means totally ignores it. And
so the plays of Cymbeitne, Macbeth, and Hamlet have marks
upon them of the various centuries to which their stories
belong. Like their author, they are not of an age, but of all
time ; but yet they are not absolutely and recklessly severeS
from their age. Cymbeline is placed by Shakespeare in the cen-
tury in which thfe old chronicles place him, and in both
Hamlet and Macbeth there are features that associate these
plays with the eleventh century, in which the historical
Hamlet and the historical Macbeth did in fact live. Now
let us notice what signs there are in King Lear of a far-away
pre-Christian century, such as that eighth in which I have
already said the Lear of the legends was supposed to have
reigned.
The fact I wish particularly to point out is that Shake-
speare has in this play purposely and deliberately conducted
us into heathefn times, and by this heathenizing acknow-
ledged the chronology of the old traditions. Anachronisms
no doubt there are, as when Regan speaks of Edgar as "my
father's godson." Shakespeare is never over-careful about
such matters. Does not Hector, in Troilus and Cr^ssida^
quote Aristotle? Indeed, he sometimes trespasses in this
way " of malice prepense " — ^as when he makes the Fool,
in act iii. scene 2, utter a prophecy after the manner of
Merlin : —
<(
When priests are more in word than matter,
When brewers mar their malt with water,
Wheii nobles are their tailors' tutors,
No heretics burned but wenches* suitors,
When every case in law is right,
No squire in debt, nor no poor knight,
When slanders do not live in tongues,
246 £SSA YS AND NOTES,
Nor cutpurses come not to, throngs ;
Then shall the realm of Albion
Come to great confusion ;
Then comes the time, who lives to see't,
That going sliall be us*d with feet "
and then calmly add : "This prophecy Merlin shall make;
for I live before his time." It is none the less true for these
and siriiilar slips, intentional or unintentional, that the atmo-
sphere of King Lmr is the atmosphere of heathendom. In
this play the poet has, for a certain purpose, travelled back
into the ages of darkness and barbarity. He has consciously
quitted the light that surrounded with more or less splen-
dour his own times, and passed into a land where the rays
of civilization were only just beginning to glimmer, where
the passions of men yet raged in all their violence, untamed
and unshackled, and nature still reigned, wild, unredeemed,
ferocious.
Amongst all Shakespeare's plays there is not one that re-
sembles King Lear in this respect. The kil]g hii'nself, with
his swiftly-kindled furies and his terrible fierce curses, seems
at- tin ies^ scai ccl y humo ft^as Shakespeare for the most part
drew humanity. G oneril, and Regan ^ anf| FHmn nfl — what
strange, savage figures are these, whose eyes burn with mere
hate, and feet are swift to shed blood ! " Then let them
anatomize Regan — see what breeds about her heart. Is there
any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts ? " This
Cornwall plucking out Gloster's eyes —
** Out, vile jelly,
Where is thy lustre now ? " —
there is nothing nearly so frightful in all the Shakespearian
theatre, or so little capable of defence so far as the perpetra-
tion of this crime on the stage is concerned. What crowd-
ing horrors, atrocities, ghastlinesses ! One seems to be among
\
KING LEAR. 247
" the dragons of the prime." It is true that there are beings
in the play of a far different order. There is Kent, the true
and faithful, whom the outrageous wrath of Lear cannot
alienate; but even Kent is characterized by a certain im-
petuosity and vehemence ; he returns wrath for wrath : —
" Be Kent unmannerly
When Lear is mad. What wilt thou do, old man ?
Think'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak
When power to flattery bows ? To plainness honour's bound,
When majesty falls to folly. Reverse thy doom,
I And in thy best consideration check
This hideous rashness.
*****
Lear, Now, by Apollo, —
• Kent, Now, by Apollo, king,
Thou swear'st thy gods in vain.
Lear, O, vassal ! miscreant !
Alb, <Sy* Com, Dear sir, forbear.
Kent, Do ; kill thy physician, and the fee bestow
Upon the foul disease. Revoke thy doom ;
Or, whilst I can vent clamour from my throat,
I'll tdl thee, tliou dost evil."
And, when he encounters the steward, who is indeed his
opposite, as base as he is noble, as faithless as he is trusty,
as self-loving as he self-sacrificing, he cannot contain his
passion, but breaks out into»a very torrent of abuse. There
is Cordelia, too, all truthfulness and piety, so that one may
well marvel how she can be sister to Goneril and Regan, and
•
may clearly understand Kent's perplexity when he cries
out : —
• "It is the stars.
The stars above us, govern our conditions 5
Else one self mate and mate could not b^et
Such different issues."
And thjere are "Edgar and Albany, also, to counterweigh the
deformities that constitute those other characters. But still
248 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
it is true that such deformities abound in such a degree in no
other Shakespearian play.
And for this reason much adverse criticism has been
levelled at King Zearand its author. Inferences have been
drawn from it highly unfavourable to the culture of the
Elizabethan age. It has been forgotten how in other pieces
Shakespeare has shown himself capable of depicting the
highest possible refinement and the truest conceivable
humanity, and remembered only that here he has painted
monsters. Such criticism, like the greater part of the un-
friendly criticism that prevailed mainly under French leader-
ship during the last century, and yet lingers on in less in-
formed quarters in our own day, is based on an imperfect
conception of Shakespeare's purpose. It has not beefl seen
that, as I have already said, it was his design in this play to
depict an age unruly and turbulent, only now emerging from
barbarism, in whose ears the still voice of conscience was
scarcely yet audible, when Passion was yet lord of all, and
the influences that broaden the division between men
and brutes were as yet but faintly exercising their divine
dominion.
If then we would appreciate this masterpiece of Shake-
speare's art, we must turn our eyes back into that cruder and
wilder world of which it is an fmage, and see in those re-
morseless, callous forms, in whose lineaments we cannot
readily discern the emotions of humanity, the proper inha-
bitants of such a sphere.
Christianity is indeed conspicuous by its absence in the
play. " It is the stars," cries out Kent, as we have already
heard : —
" The stars above us govern our conditions."
Observe, too, Lear's heathen oaths :—r
KING LEAR. * ' 249
** by the sacred radiance of the sun ;
The mysteries of Hecate, and the night ;
By all the operation of the orbs,
From whom we do exist, and cease to be. "
It is " the gods " he cites in another passage as " themselves
throwing incense upon such sacrifices" as Cordelia and
himself, when they have fallen 'in the hands of their
enemies.
And not only are there such certain and designed indi-
cations of a far remote paganism in King Lear, but also —
and this is a point I believe not hitherto perceived —
Shakespeare is not unmindful of the race to which his story
belonged. Shakespeare had a keen sense of national cha-
racter. This appears in several of his plays : eminently in
the Merchant of J^enice, where he paints his immortal por-
trait of the Jew : in Romeo and Juliet^ where he depicts the
swiftly susceptible temperament of Italy; in Othello^ where
the hot blood of North Africa glows in the veins of his hero.
To this list I propose to add King Lear as a strikingly faith-
ful picture of the Celtic race.
If it is asked, where he had studied this race, the answer
is, not so much through books as through direct observation.
It was not Shakspere's way to look at nature through spec-
tacles, or any such instruments, if he could help it. He
looked at her face to face; dared, not irreverently, but
yet steadily, t& gaze into her very eyes, and listen for him-
self to the beatings of her heart. And this is why his works
are so inestimable ; they are not mere copies of copies, but
taken ducctly fi-om the original. Nature herself visited the
studio of this artist, and sat serene and patient while his
pencil traced her imperishable features. So, wishing to
portray Celts, Shakspere gave his attention, not to printed
descriptions, but the living and breathing specimens of the
2SO • ESS A YS AND NOTES.
race as they were to be se^ and known in Great Britain.
In the older play the king of Cambria is specially addressed
as " Welshman." It was as well, known in the sixteenth
century as. now that the Welshmen were the direct descen-
dants of the Ancient Britons. Therefore, if anywhere, the
posterity of King Lear was to be found (in the original story
his family is not extinguished as in Shakespeare's version, but
perpetuated through the children of Goneril and Regan), it
was to be found amongst the Welsh. Some years before he
wrote King Lear Shakespeare had studied and portrayed the
Welshman. In his Henry V., written in 1599, he has
brought together representatives of the various components
of our nation. There is Macmorris the Irishman, Jamy the
Scotchman, besides of course Englishmen of different
grades and various characters ; and the^ is Flue lien, the
brave, high-spirited, quick-blooded, fantastic Welshman,
full of natural pride, and a determined avenger*of all insults
offered to ** the leek."
" I do know Fluellen valiant.
And touched with choler, hot as gunpowder,
And quickly will return an injury."
King Lear takes us into the midst of such a race — a race
highly inflammable, headstrong, flushed with sudden angers,
and breaking out into wild violences, but also, in its better
children at least, of a deep tenderness and. sincerity; in
short, a highly emotional race, quickly stirred to good and
to evil ; swift to love, swift to hate ; blessing and cursing
with the same breath ; with eyes, now full of a gentle solici-
tude and regard, now flashing into an intolerant rfrenzy of
detestation ; a blind hysterical race, if not wisely counselled
and judiciously led; but under good auspices springing
forward, with a splendid vivacity, to the highest prizes of
glory and honour. This is a perilous temperament, and
KING LEAR. . 251
there is no prophet who shall say what its career shall be —
whether it will reconcile itself to the bonds and the bars of
existence, or dash itself to pieces in a fierce revolt. It is
perhaps true that there is no middle path for it ; it must
either triumph or perish. Look now at the characters in
our play. Is not the king himself the very type of his
race? The Teutonic mind can scarcely follow the rapid
revolutions of his fiery spirit. Here we see an intensely
sensitive nature, that yearns for love, and even for the mere
profession of it, suddenly flaming out into an outrageous
wrath, and banning and banishing the dearest and truest
treasures of his life. Look at Kent, as we have already
seen him, no less swiftly convulsed and frenzied than the
master, whom, for all his wildness, he serves to the very
death. Look at Cornwall : —
'* You know the fiery quality of the duke.
How unremovahle and fix'd he is
In his own course."
and note Lear's frantic reply : —
" Vengeance ! plague ! death ! confusion I
Fiery ? what quality ? "
And Cordelia — is she too not a true daughter of her father
and of her race ? Is not the Celtic impulsiveness her cha-
racteristic? Why will "our joy, although the last, not
least," not respond when the old man asks her for some ex-
pression of her love ? Was it well that she should harden
herself against that yearning cry ? Ah I she was a child of
her race, and the indignation that was kindled in her fine
soul by the falsehoods of her sisters overcame every other
feeling; and not 'to draw
'* A third more opulent than her sisters,"
■
nay, not to pleasure that father for whom she was ready, as
252 • ESSAYS AND NOTES.
she proved, to give up everything that she might cherish
him, would she then make a single overture* of afiection I
Thus in King Lear we pass into a remote pre-Chri^pan
age, and into the midst of another race than our own ; and
so the play has a certain historical and a certain ethool<^;ical
interest* But it has another interest far transcendii^ these
— a great humail interest ; and it is on this only we will now
fix our thoughts. Seen in a certain light, the distinctions of
ages and of races are merely triviaL '*A touch of nature
makes the whole world kin ; " or, as the Latin poet expresses
it, ''I am a man, and nothing that is human do I deem
alien." And the reason why, to the end of time, men will
stand and gaze, all rapt and absorbed, on this picture^ is
because it represents human life, not any ^>ecial time ^
people. The picture is individual, but it is also t3rpical;
it is -of men, but it is also of mankind ; it is of an age, but it
is also of all time.
King Lear deals especially with the natural man as
opposed to the artificial man. When the King saw Edgar,
then a Tom o' Bedlam, in the great storm scene, he
exclaims —
*' Is man no more than this ? Consider him welL Thou owest the
worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfiunei
Ha! here's three on 's [himself, the Fool, Kent] are sophisticated!
Thou art the thing itself : unaccommodated man is no more but such
a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art. Off, ofi^ you lendings ! Come;
unbutton here.''
And he tears his clothes oflf him. And this bare-stripped
figure, in that awful scene, may serve as an image of the
society the play represents. It is a society with all its dis-
guises torn off. The passions walk abroad, bold and confident.
Greed lifts up its head unabashed ; Lust scorns all holy ties;
Wrath rages like a tempest. A fearful earth, indeed, if given
KING LEAR. 253
over to such accursed powers I But it is not so. There is
also the passion of Love, and throughout the play love is
performing its secret ministry. Good and evil close in a
•fierce struggle, as always where there is life, and not mere
death ; and in the end good prevails, as in the end it must
prevail : for evil has not only good to encounter, but it has
to fight with itself: it is essentially self-consuming. So that
in this play we have presiented to us humanity in its purest
and simplest elements — humanity unsophisticated, denuded
of all its " lendings," with its natural impulses all unchecked
and potent.
Now, in the space at our disposal, it is impossible to
attempt to examine in detail a work of such multiform inte-
rest as this play. It might be well worth our while to ob-
serve Goneril and Regan, and see how like and how diffe-
rent they are ; how in both there reigns a certain shameless
effrontery of selfishness, while in the elder sister there is an
originality of crime with which the other is not endowed;
so that while in the matter of morality there is little to choose
between them, in intellectual activity Goneril has the advan-
tage, or disadvantage.
Or we might attend to the striking contrast developed be-
tween the Steward and Kent — ^a contrast already mentioned;
how the one is the very image of the time-server, the other
of the truth-server ; how the one lends himself to all vile
uses, the other maintains his integrity at any cost, and finds
it banishment, and not freedom, to be where loud lies pre-
vail over modest sincerity; how the one lives and moves
only for himself, the other only for others.
Of the Fool might attract u^ with his strange, keen sense
of his master's folly in his abdication — a sense quickened
by the tender love he bears him and the daughter that
resembles him, — the Fool who, "since my young lady's
254 -ESSA YS AND NOTES.
»
going into France, hath much pmed away/' and whose
heart breaks amidst the fell distresses that presently fall
upon the house, — tenderest of jesters !
Or we might follow the course of the Earl of Gloucester,
from the ominous carelessness of his first appearance, to the
time when the clouds, which indeed his own act has formed, •
gather and burst upon his miserable head ; how his whole
being is astonished and amazed, and he thinks himself the
mere victim of a malignant or a reckless Heaven —
"As flies to wanton boys, are we to gods ;
They kill us for their sport."
and he is eager to reach that cliff,
" whose high and bending head
Looks fearfully in the confined deep : "
but at last learns submission, —
** Henceforth ril bear
Affliction, till it do cry out itself,
* Enough, enough,' and die."
for indeed, however imperfectly he recognizes the lesson, .
" The gods are just ^ and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us"
Or we might watch the true and sound nature of Albany ;
how it severs itself from that of Goneril, with a divine dis-
cordance — not quick to suspect evil or to condemn^ but in-
flexible towards it when" once unveiled and patent —
" O Goneril !
You are not worth the dust which the rude wind
Blows in your face. I fear your disposition :
That nature, which contemns its origin,
Cannot be border'd certain in itself ;
She, that herself will sliver and disbranch
• KING LEAR, 255
From her material sapi perforce must wither
And come to deadly use.
Gon, No more : the text is foolish. . .
Alb, Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile :
Filths savour but themselves. What have you done ?
Tigers, not daughters, what have you perform'd ? *
A father, and a gracious aged man, .
Whose reverence even the head-lugg'd bear would lick,
Most barbarous, most degenerate ! have you madded.
Could my good brother suffer you to do it ?
A man, a prince, by him so benefited ?
If that the heavens do not their visible spirits
Send quickly down to tame these vile offences,
It will come ;
Humanity must perforce prey on itself,
Like monsters of the deep."
Or the two brothers, Edmund and Edgar, the false and
the true, might well occupy us : Edmund, whose very spirit
is stained by the stain of his birth, and mutinies against " the
plague of custom " that so brands him, and, recklessly mutiny-
ing, discerns nothing binding or holy in the ties of brother-
hood or sonship or marriage.
" Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound."
Edgar, the good angel of his house, with his bright, keen,
ready intellect, but yet brighter soul ; whose own suflferings
but yield him opportunities to minister to others,. and, him-
self in desperate fortunes, to lead them on to hope 'and
peace,
" Ever bearing free and patient thoughts."
•
Perhaps, if we so stand and muse, we should presently
notice that this play deals specially with domestic and social
relations, and shows how all order, indeed all civilization,
rests and reposes upon them ; how the rending of the bonds
that bind child to parent, and child to child, involve the
2S6 ESSA YS AND NOTES^
rupture and ruin of the whole human fabric. ** It is not
good to live alone ; " nay, it is not possible. We cannot
isolate ourselveS, if we would. We cannot repeal the ordi-
nances of our birth. We cannot re-adjust the ties of blood
and of kindred. King Lear is a magnificent exhibition of
what the Latins call " piety " — of the affection to which we
are bound by duty, as distinguished from the affection which
springs from taste and selection. Virgil's " pious ^neas "
is a less effective figure than Shakespeare's pious Edgar or-
the pious Cordelia. And, for impiety, what portraits have
ever been drawn to compare with Edmund, Goneril, and
Regan ?
From such a multitude of interests I propose now to select
only two. Let us look only at the King himself, and at
Cordelia. What means this strange, hoary-headed figure,
wildly rushing into the storm, appealing madly to the cloud-
coped heavens —
** Contending with the fretful element :
Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea,
Or swell the curled waters Tjove the main,*
That things might change or cease : tears his white hair ;
Which the impetuous blasts, with eyeless rage,
Catch in their fury, and make nothing of;
Strives in his little world of man to outscom
The to-and-fro-conflicting wind and rain.
This night, wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch.
The lion and the belly-pinched wolf
Keep their fur dry, unbonneted he runs,
. And bids what will take all.
Kent, , But who is with him ?
Gent, None but the fool ; who labours to outjest
His heart-struck injuries."
And Cordelia, why must she die ? Is it not anguishing
that it is so ? Does not one feel as if one would give years
of one's own liffe, if one might, to retain her, when " Enter
I
KING LEAR. 257
Lear, with Cordelia dead in his arms " ? " Cordelia, Cor-
delia, stay a little ". Whence is sped the arrow that strikes
down that lovely presence ? Is it from the quiver of a just
and law-abiding heaven ? or are we indeed the mere game of
wanton gods, and the earth but a hunting-ground for their
high majesties, when they care to leave their nectar for a
season, and exercise their celestial limbs in the chase ?
To understand the terrific sufferings of King Lear, we
must closely examine him as he is when we first see him.
He is a man of keen aflfectionateness, and a nature that wins
affection, but of a nature altogether uncurbed and headstrong.
He is an absolute king, a very sultan, whose will, whose whim,
has been and is his law. The amiable Goneril and Regan
describe him as he has been only too accurately : —
" Gon, You see how full of changes his age is ; the observation we
have made of it hath not been little : he always loved our sister most ;
and with what poor judgement he hath now cast her off, appears too
grossly.
Reg, *Tis the infirmity of his age : yet he hath ever but slenderly
known himself,
Gon, 77ie best and soundest of his time hath been but rash ; then must
we look to receive from his age not alone the imperfections of long-
engrafTd condition ; but, therewithal, the unruly wa)rwardness that
infirm and choleric years bring with them. "
An indulgent, kindly, impetuous, obstinate man, with whom
life has flowed smoothly, simply because no firm, irremovable
obstruction ever made it whirl and foam. Lear has had his
own way, and his way has not been all selfish and evil.
" When he did stare, see how the subject quaked." Thwart-
ings and crossings have not formed part of his experience.
And now we see him,
** Fourscore and upward, not an hour more or less,"
laying down almightily a programme for his closing years.
s
258 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
*' Meantime we shall express our darker purpose.
Give me the map there. — Know, that we have divided
In three our kingdom : and 'tis our fast intent
To shake all cares and business from our age ;
Conferring them on younger strengths, while we
Unburdened crawl toward death."
What an irony is here ! Read these words in the light of
what was to come ! The test he proceeds to make of the
affections of his daughters must be pronounced foolish
enough. Goethe, indeed, called this opening scene "ab-
surd ; " but it is scarcely so, if we remember what Lear's ex-
perience had been. His unhappy position as autocrat had
prevented his ever learning the worthlessness of mere words,
or realizing the abysses that may separate words from deeds.
He listens with a foolish satisfaction and a fatal credulity to
the " large speeches " of his elder daughters. And now at
last, in the very hour of his calm, when there are to be no
more troubles, and he has said to his soul, " Soul ! take
thine ease," even now begins for him a new and tenible
time.
The instant that he encounters a check, and this queer
caprice of his is challenged and denied, all the wildness of
his nature shows itself ; for, indeed, for all his long life, he
is yet wild and untutored and untamed — the exact reverse
of what Edgar, in one of his various shifts, describes himself
to be —
"A most poor man, made tame to fortune's blows,
Who by the art of known and feeling sorrows
Am pregnant to good pity."
That instant, when his whim is traversed, he flames out into
a demoniac fury, and hurls his curse at his "joy."
It is not, nor it cannot come to, good. What " hideous
rashness," to use Kent's words. He tells us himself:
KING LEAR, 259
** I lov'd her most, and thought to set my rest
On her kind nursery."
** He has always loved our sister most," says GoneriL Yet
he shrieks out :
*' Hence, and avoid my sight !
So be my grave my peace, as here I give
Her father's heart from her."
What of the long years of affection and love that they had
lived together ? Can these be uprooted like weeds, and flung
away to the winds ? Is man omnipotent over his past, and
can he tear all its traditions in pieces? When Lear ful-
minates against Cordelia, it is no less on himself that the
thunderbolts fall From this time he is a maimed and
broken man. The best influence of his life is turned out of
his doors. Who can say how much his excitable nature
had already owed to the better-controlled temperament of
Cordelia? When Kent interferes, he rages only the more
vehemently, —
** Come not between the dragon and his wrath ; "
and at last, in his fury, banishes him : —
** Hear me, recreant !
On thine allegiance, hear me !
Since thou hast sought to make us break our vow,
(Which we durst never yet,) and with strained pride
To come between our sentence and our power
(Which nor our nature nor our place can bear,)
Our potency made good, take thy reward :
Five days we do allot thee, for provision
To shield thee from diseases of the world ;
And on the sixth to turn thy hated back
Upon our kingdom : if, on the tenth day following,
Thy banished trunk be found in our dominions.
The moment is thy death. Away ! by Jupiter,
This shall not be revoked."
26o ESSA yS AND NOTES,
From this .ferocity nothing can be hoped. We are prepared
for all that follows. After this paroxysm against the darling
of his heart, the next wild outburst against Goneril surprises
us not at all. Here we know there has been some serious
provocation ; yet here, too, what frightful intemperance and
excess. If the voice of a better nature had not ceased
appealing to Goneril, would not this loud curse have hushed
and scared it away for ever ? Well may Albany exclaim,
" Now gods that we adore, whereof comes this ? "
This wild father finds himself all of a sudden in the midst of
a world of hate and scorn. Already had Cordelia's " fault,"
he says,
"like an engine, wrench'd my frame of nature
From the fixed place."
Regan supports Goneril, and there seems no longer finn
ground under his feet. His brain reels under the pressure
of such huge reverses, and the storm that now breaks out in
the physical world is less terrible than that which rages in his
soul.
Perhaps there is nothing in all literature to equal the
scene upon the heath that presently follows, as the old King
stands exposed to all the whirling fury of the winds and the
rains, and, what is more dreadful far, with all his faith in
humanity convulsed and uprooted. He seems the victim of
a dreadful league between the powers of nature and yet
more remorseless man.
"I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;
I never gave you kingdom, called you children 5
You owe me no subscription : then let fall
Your horrible pleasure ; here I stand, your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man : —
But yet I call you servile ministers.
That will with two pernicious daughters join*d
KING LEAR. 261
Your high engendered battles, 'gainst a head
So old and white as this. O ! O ! 'tis foul ! "
The very earth quakes under his feet, and truth and honour
seem buried in the gulfs that suddenly yawn around. When
and where shall he find comfort? Virtue is no longer a
reality, but a merely simulated thing. A darkness worse than
that of the unstarred night falls upon his spirit, so that
the mere material inclemencies that assail him are hardly
perceived.
**Thou think*st *tis much that this contentious storm
Invades us to the skin : so 'tis to thee :
But where the greater malady is fix'd,
The lesser is scarce felt. Thou 'Idst shun a bear ;
But if thy flight lay toward the raging sea,
Thou 'Idst meet the bear i' the mouth. When the mind's free,
The body's delicate : the tempest in my mind
Doth from my senses take all feeling else,
Save what beats there."
Slight indeed his bodily ailments by the side of the anguish
of his mind — the sharper than serpent's teeth that gnaw and
tear his inmost heart.
" Oh ! that torment should not be confined
To the body's wounds and sores,
With maladies innumerable
In heart, head, breast, and reins ;
But must secret passage find
To the inmost mind ;
Then exercise all his fierce accidents,
And on her purest spirits prey.
As on entrails, joints, and limbs.
With answerable pains, but more intense.
Though void of corporal sense." (Samson Agon,)
His self-command gradually deserts him. Patience has
never been one of his virtues, and patience is not a virtue
262 ESSA YS AND NOTES,
that can be extemporized. And it is in vain that he cries
out, " No, I will be the pattern of all patience ; I will say
nothing : *' it cannot be. The long years will bear their
proper fruit.
It is a very relief, exquisitely piteous though the sight is,
when he becomes unconscious of his infinite wrongs, and,
amid the phantasies of delirium, wears once more his crown
and administers justice upon a world of hjrpocrites. You
may see, if you listen to his speeches — speeches that are not
all wild and wandering, —
" Or matter and impertinency mix*d !
Reason in madness ! " —
how there are reflected upon the broken fragments of his
mind his own bitter experiences.
But do not for a moment fancy that these awful sufferings,
to which this old man is subjected, are mere idle visitations,
or that Shakespeare represents them to us merely to display
his mastery of his art ; for, indeed, madness has never been
represented in art with at all comparable skill. Shake-
speare was too human-hearted so to trifle with us. Can we
think he would not have altered this " side-piercing sight,"
if the facts of life would have let him ? Can we think his
own most gentle heart did not yearn towards this so piteous
old king —
**that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune, and harsh " ?
But he would have us remember that the sufferings of King
Lear were partly at least the result of his own wild and cruel
impulsiveness. Lear had lived long, but he had not learned
wisdom. The great school of the world never breaks up.
Lear, in his old age, was yet low in the great world-school,
and had yet to master a quite elementary lesson. He was
KING LEAR, 263
slow at it, as might be expected ; but it had to be learned.
Amidst storm and tempest and agonies, he learned it.
He learned to know himself, how frail and feeble he was,
how narrow all his prerogatives ; and that the glozings, that
in old days had charmed and enervated his soul, were born
of falsehood, and not of truth.
"They flattered me like a dog; and told me, I had the white hairs
in my beard, ere the black ones were there. To say * ay,* and * no,* to
everything I said ! — *'Ay * and * no* too was no good divinity. When
the rain came to wet me once, and the wind to make me chatter ; when
the thunder would not peace at my bidding ; there I found *em, there I
smelt *em out. Go to, they are not men o* their words : they told me
I was everything : 'tis a lie ; I am not ague-proof."
And so he learned to mistrust all mere appearances.
**A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with
thine ears : see how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark,
in thine ear : Change places ; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice,
which is the thief? *'
He learned, too, sympathy with his poorer fellows.
** Poor naked wretches, wheresoe*er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides.
Your loop'd and window*d raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these ? O, I have ta'en
Too little care of this ! Take physic, pomp ;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel ;
That thou may*st shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just.**
Lear is a changed man when he awakes out of that healing
sleep in Cordelia's tent.
" In him the savage virtue of his race,
Revenge, and all ferocious thoughts were dead,*'
as he sees that sweet ministering spirit standing by. Ah !
264 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
think when he had last seen her ! He cannot believe but
that she is of another world, or that such tenderness is not
for him.
** Pray, do not mock me :
I am a very foolish, fond old man,
Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less ;
And, to deal plainly,
I fear, I am not in my perfect mind.
*****
" You must bear with me :
Pray you now, forget and forgive : I am old and foolish."
The old rage had passed away, and now only the love
of a loving and lovable nature — only his better part — sur-
vives. Blessed with his restored darling, he wants nothing
more.
** Come, let*s away to prison :
We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage :
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down.
And ask of thee forgiveness. So we *11 live.
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news ; and we '11 talk with them too, —
Who loses, and who wins ; who's in, who's out," &c.
He is now ripe for death ; and when that new blow falls,
and his Cordelia is taken from him, he dies quietly and at
once. In fact, her death is not so much a fresh misfortune
for him, as the signal for his release. The gate of the
unseen is not yet closed upon her, when it re-opens for him;
and so his weary and heavy-laden spirit finds rest at last
** Vex not his ghost : oh, let him pass ! he hates him
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer."
It remains that I try to say something of Cordelia,
though I do not forget Schlegel's words, " Of Cordelia's
heavenly beauty of soul I do not dare to speak."
KING LEAR. 265
She tells us of herself, and you may accept every word her
true lips utter, that
" what I well intend,
I '11 do 't before I speak."
Her whole nature shrinks from loud avowals and protesta-
tions. She loves to be, not to seem. When GoneriVs tongue
overflows with fine phrases of filial affection, her very soul
recoils.
** WJiat shall Cordelia do ? Love, and be silent,^*
When Regan rivals her elder sister in professions, she whispers
to herself :
** Then poor Cordelia !
And yet not so ; since, I am sure, my love 's
More richer than my tongue."
When at last her turn comes in this strange vtvd voceexaxni-
nation, all her truthful instincts are aroused, and it seems to
her it would be treason to add her voice to the lying chorus.
Also the question is put to her in a way dreadfully offensive
to her disinterested spirit :
" What can you say, to draw
A third more opulent than your sisters ? Speak."
Is love to be traded in so ? Are the treasures of the soul to
be bought and sold ? She will not say a word ! Perhaps,
one might say she cannot say a word. It is true that she
" cannot heave her heart into her mouth." Still less does
she care to " mend her speech a little, lest it should mar her
fortunes." Blame her, if you please, and tell us what a per-
fect person would have done. What you say may be all
very true, but the world is not populated by perfect persons,
and Shakespeare does not make it his business to draw
perfect persons. And you must take her as she is. She
will have to suffer for this waywardness, perhaps. Let us
266 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
only think for the present of the impulses of truth that
govern her being. The poor king, when he curses her, does
indeed bless her —
** 77iy truth, then, be thy dcwer,"
It is SO : this is the divine " settlement " nature has made
for her ! Truth is indeed her jointure. And so the King
of France is right when he declares " she is herself a dowry.'*
Who does not applaud and envy his high choice ? —
*' Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor ;
Most choice, forsaken ; and most loved, despised I
Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon :
Be it lawful, I take up what 's cast away.
Gods, gods ! 'tis strange, that from their cold'st n^lect
My love should kindle to inflamed respect.
Thy dowerless daughter, king, thrown to my chance,
Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France :
Not all the dukes of waterish Burgundy
Can buy this unprized precious maid of me. —
Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind :
Thou losest here, a better where to find."
We see nothing more of this fair, true woman till towards
the end of the piece, when she lands with forces to avenge
her father's wrongs. But Shakespeare has contrived to keep
her perpetually before our mind's eye. She is present,
though absent, like
** That silver sphere.
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear,
Until we hardly see — yftfeel that it is there."
The Fool, as we have heard already, pines much for " my
young lady," and we find that, though dismissed with such
outrageous resentment by her father, her first thought has
been for him. She has kept herself in communication with
the court, that if ever she is wanted to doy not to say^ any-
KING LEAR, 267
thing for him, she may be at once informed. She stands
watching the poor old man's fortunes, like some sweet,
wistful-eyed angel with wings ready to be spread on a
mission of mercy. Kent, in the stocks before Gloucester's
castle, draws forth a letter to read from her.
** I know, 'tis from Cordelia ;
Who hath most fortunately been informed
Of my obscured course ; and shall find time
From this enormous state, — seeking to give
Losses their remedies."
Presently he sends to her for the news of how things are
going, and in a later scene we hear how she received it.
" Kent, Did your letters pierce the queen to any demonstration
of grief?
Gent, Ay, sir ; she took them, read them in my presence ;
And now and then an ample tear trill'd down
Her delicate cheek : it seem'd, she was a queen
Over her passion ; who, most rebel-like,
Sought to be king o'er her.
Kent, O, then it moved her ?
Gent, Not to a rage : patience and sorrow strove
Who should express her goodliest. You have seen
Sunshine and rain at once : her smiles and tears
Were like a better way : those happy smilets,
That play'd on her ripe lip, seem'd not to know
What guests were in her eyes ; which parted thence.
As pearls from diamonds dropp'd. — In brief,
Sorrow would be a rarity most beloved,
If all could so become it.
Kent, Made she no verbal question ?
Gent, 'Faith, once, or twice, she heaved the name of * father '
Pantingly forth, as if it press'd her heart ;
Cried, ' Sisters ! sisters ! Shame of ladies ! sisters !
Kent ! father ! sisters ! What ? i' the storm ? i* the night ?
Let pity not be believed ! * — There she shook
The holy water from her heavenly eyes.
And clamour moisten'd : — then away she started,
To deal with grief alone."
268 ESS A YS AND NOTES.
At last we are permitted to see her again, all eager to find
the poor King, " as mad as the vex'd sea," and nurse him
with her own sweet tendance. She is pure devotion, earnest
in thanking others for their services, but never dreaming of
any thanks for her own or conscious of fuiy merit in them.
" O thou good Kent, how shall I live, and work.
To match thy goodness ? My life will be too short.
And every measure fail me."
While her father sleeps, she stands by praying :
** O you kind gods,
Cure this great breach in his abused nature !
The untuned and jarring senses, oh, wind up.
Of this child-changed father I "
And presently, to the playing of music, the old man awakes
himself and sobered, as we have seen, and father and
daughter are once more happy in each other's arms.
And now why must she die ? I have said Shakespeare
was no arbitrary homicide. Was it not possible, then, that
Cordelia should live ? In the first place, it must be noted
that Cordelia lands in England at the head of a French
army, and the national sentiment, strong always — ^boister-
ously strong in the Elizabethan age — demanded that the
enterprise should therefore fail. Albany, for instance, was
on Lear's side, and would not have opposed any means of
avenging him, compatible with his patriotism. But he could
not let foreign troops overrun the dear free soil of this island
" Where I could not be honest,
I never yet was valiant ; for this business,
It touches us as France invades the land
Not bolds the king, with others, whom, I fear.
Most just and heavy causes make oppose."
But quite apart from this national reason, there are two
others of deep ethical moment that may explain the awful
KING LEAR, 269
catastrophe. One is this : her own nature betrays her. Is
she not, as we have seen, the child of impulse ? Was it not
so in her first appearance, and is it not so in her last ? And
can such natures thrive in our air ? Does not the sword ever
overhang them? And in times of violence, like that pictured
by Shakespeare in King Lear, will it not fall ? She cannot
take care of herself in this world. She is all for truth, as w»e
first see her. Home and wealth, and even her father's smile,
are nothing to her by the side of that sumless treasure. Later
on in her pure life, she is all for love; she thinks of nothing
else but relieving her father; she gives not a thought to her own
safety and protection in an enemy's country. Now, here on
this earth it goes hard with such natures. They belong to a
different sphere ; they cannot conform to our habits of self-
consideration and prudence. These are the martyrs of this
world, and in their hands are palms.
"Upon such sacrifices
The gods themselves throw incense."
Lastly, when evil powers are let loose, mischief and ruin
will ensue not only on those who have unchained them, but
on the innocent who fall within their baleful reach. They
are like the winds in that bag -^olos gave Odysseus in the
old story. Once let them fly out and rave, and who shall
count the shipwrecks that shall strew the shores? The
foolish sailors, who did the deed, may cry and moan with a
real repentance; but the waves will soon smother their
wretched shrieks, and the blasts but howl a dirge for them.
Can we think that Goneril and Regan could have power
placed in their hands, and no harm come of it except io the
unwise donor? Does not the rain fall on the just and the
unjust ? Yes ; and so does the rain of ruin, in the hour and
power of evil. The whirlwind, when once it rages, does not
pick and choose its victims. GoneriFs spite will not spare
270 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
Cordelia, when once it has a chance of venting itself upon
her; the chance comes, and it does not spare her. Let
Lear bemoan his folly as he may, yet, alas ! alas ! he cannot
cancel it By all means let the wicked man repent, let him
turn away from his wickedness, and let him save his soul
alive, as best he may; but do not let him flatter himself
that he can certainly undo his crime.
** Nescit vox missa reverti.'*
When blood is shed, can it be gathered up again ?
And so Cordelia dies : not only Goneril and Regan con-
sumed by their own guilt as by a living fire ; and Cornwall
stabbed by outraged humanity in the shape of a peasant ; and
Edmund pierced by the righteous sword of Edgar; and
Gloucester crushed by the weight of his own troubles ; and
the King broken-hearted.
In that last scene, when the house of Lear is on the verge
of extinction, as the dying King stoops over the corpse of
Saint Cordelia, well may Kent, who has himself a journey
shortly to go, ask, " Is this the promised end ? " He means,
"Is this the day of judgment?" "Or image of that
horror?" says Edgar. Yes; it is an image of that horror,
if we can understand. So
** draw the curtain dose,
And let us all to meditation."
CORDELL ANSLYE. 271
XXIV.
CORDELL ANSLYE.
(From the Atkenaum for Sept 2, 1876.)
MY friend, Mr. S. J. Low, sends me a copy of the
following epitaph from a slab let in the wall of what
was formerly the tower of the church at Lee, Kent : —
" Here lyeth buried the bodyes of Bryan Anslye Esquier,
late of Lee in the county of Kent, and Audry his wife, the
only davghter of Robert Turell, of Bvrbrocke in ye county
of Essex Esquier. He had issue by her one sonne and
three daughters, Bryan who died w***out issve; Grace married
to S' John Wilgoose, Knight; Christian married to the
Lord Sands ; and Cordell married to Sir William Hervey,
Knight. Ye said Bryan the father died on the X*** of J vly
1604; he served Qveene Elizabeth as one of ye band of
Gentlemen Pencioners to her Ma**® the space of XXX*^®
yeares. The said Awdry died on ye XXV*^ of Novebeber
{sic) 1 591. Cordell, the youngest daughter, at her owne
proper cost and chardges, in further testimonie of her dvti-
fvll love vnto her father and mother, caused this monvment
to be erected for the p'petvall memorie of their names
against the ingratefvll natvre of oblivious time.
"Nee primus, nee ultimus ; multi ante,
Cesserunt, et omnes sequetitur " {sic).
The mention of " ye band of Gentlemen Pencioners" is
interesting. How gay and grand they were we know from
the Midsummer Nights Dream, II. i. 10 : —
272 JESS A VS AND NOTES.
" The cowslips tall her pensioners be ;
In their gold coats spots you see."
and Merry Wives of Windsor^ II. ii. 78, where Mistress
Quickly is boasting of Mrs. Ford's suitors : —
"The best courtier of them all, when the Court lay at
Windsor, could never have brought her to such a canary
. . . And yet there has been earls, nay which is moxQ pen-
sioners; but I warrant you all is one with her." " As brave
as ^.ny pensioners'^ is a phrase of Nash's {Piers Penniless).
But more interesting is the last sentence, where Cordell is
not unmindful of her greater namesake, for there is certainly
in it an echo of the old story. And it is not impossible that
she may have been influenced by Shakespeare's version of
it j for that in all probability was just come out at the time
she was erecting her filial monument. But it is not neces-
sary to suppose so, for the popularity of the old tale, which
her very name illustrates, is shown by many various sixteenth
century versions, to say nothing of the old play, of which we
first hear in 1593 as acted at the Rose Theatre, and have a
printed edition in 1605.
The form of the name is worth noting. Other forms that
occur are Cordilla, Cordeilla, Cordoille, or Gordoylle. In
the pre-Shakespearian play it is Cordelia. Spenser has
Cordeill, and also Cordelia.
We may fondly trust that Grace and Christian, the elder
sisters, by no means corresponded to Goneril and Regan.
THE PORTER IN MACBETH, 273
XXV.
THE PORTER IN MACBETH.
(Read at the Fifth Meeting of the New Shakspere Society, May 22, 1874. )
** I pray you remember the Porter." — ii. 3,
AS is well known, the earliest extant copy of the play of
Macbeth^\% that of the Folio of 1623. Perhaps the
earliest allusion to the play occurs, as Mr. Halliwell points
out, in the year 1607, in the Puritan^ (iv. 3); where the
words "We'll ha' the ghost i' th' white sheet sit at upper end
o' th' table," seem distinctly to refer to the apparition of
Banquo. So that Macbeth had been. exhibited at least six-
teen years before its publication in the first Folio. And it
has been suspected that in more than one part the play is
not preserved in the Folio in the exact shape in which it
left the hand of its creator. Thus the passage in the 3Pd
scene of the 4th act, where the touching for the " King's
evil " is described, has been supposed to be an interpolation,
and it certainly has the air of being so. In the preface of
the Clarendon .press edition of the play, many other
passages are mentioned which the editors, rightly or wrongly,
incline to believe were written by Middleton. Amongst the
^ssages that have been doubted are the soliloquy of the
Porter, and the short dialogue that follows between the
Porter and Macduff. And the doubts concerning it deserve
^ See Hazlitt's Shakespear^s Plays and PoemSy vol. v. p. 293, ed. 1852.
Hazlitt's note is.: — ** Dr. Farmer thinks this was intended as a sneer at
Macbeth."
T
274 ^SSA YS AND NOTES.
all consideration, because they were supported, if not
originated, by the best Shakespearian critic this country
has yet produced. "The low soliloquy of the Porter," says
Coleridge, "and his few speeches afterwards, I believe to
have been written for the mob by some other hand, perhaps
with Shakespeare's consent; and finding it take, he, with
the remaining ink of a pen otherwise employed, just inter-
polated, the words, * I!ll devil-porter it no further : I had
thought to let in some of all professions, that go the prim-
rose way to the everlasting bonfire.' Of the rest not one
syllable has the .ever-present being of Shakespeare." — {LiU-
m
rary Remains^ ii. 246-7.) Coleridge is not be followed im-
plicitly, because he has in other Shakespearian matters ened
strangely;* but yet this doom of his must not be lightiy
disregarded. It cannot be said, however, to have convinced
the world. Many editors do not even acknowledge that a
doubt should exist. Gervinus does go just so far. " Cole-
ridge and Collier," he says, " are in favour of this omission,
as they consider his [the *Porter*s] soliloquy to be the un-
authorized interpolation of an actor. It may be so." And
then he proceeds, in fact, to show how it may not be so.
I propose in this paper to consider whether the Porter is
not after all a genuine offspring of Shakespeare's art. It is
possible to show bpyond controversy, that he is an integral
part of the original play ; and therefore we must conclude, if
he is not the creation of Shakespeare, that the play was on- •
ginally the fruit of a joint authorship, and not merely
amended by some reviser. But if, in addition to this, it can
^ Thus, in 1802, he places TJie London Prodigal amongst Shake-
speare's plays, The Merchant of Venice after Henry K, &c. ; in 1810,
The Tempest in the 2nd Period, OtJullo amongst the latest plays ; in
1 8 19, The Tempest in the same epoch with The Merchant of Venice y &c
See Literary Remains, ii. 86-91.
THE PORTER IN lHACBETff. 275
be shown that his appearance is in accordance with the
artistic system by which Shakespeare worked, that it relieves
.the awful intensity of the action, and permits the spectator
to draw breath, — further, that he satisfies that law of con-
trast which rules, not unfrequently in a manner that per-
plexes and estonishes, the undoubted compositions of
Shakespeare — that his speech has a certain dramatic perti-
nence, and is by no means an idle outflow of irrelevant
buffoonery; — if such theses can be maintained, then cer-
tainly the Porter is the result of Shakespeare's direct dicta-
tion, if not his own manufacture. Lastly, if his particular
style and language prove to be Shakespearian, it must surely
be a confirmed hypersceptic that persists in believing that he
is not of .the family of Shakespeare, but begotten by some
skilful mimic. Certainly these are the five points which
should be thoroughly considered before any final verdict is
pronounced. On each one of them I shall try to offer a few
suggestions. For the sake of clearness I recapitulate
them : —
(i.) That a Porter's speech is an integral part of the
play,
(ii.) That it is necessary as a relief to the surrounding
horror,
(iii.) That it is necessary according to the law of contrast
elsewhere obeyed,
(iv.) That the speech we have is dramatically relevant,
(v.) That its style and language are Shakespearian.
(i.) That a Portals speech is an integral part of the play.
This i!s a very simple matter. No one will deny that the
knocking scene is an integral part of the play. In the whole
Shakespearian theatre there is perhaps no other instance
where such an awful effect is produced by so slight a means.
a.<i when, ^^ dcc^ of blood accomplsfaedr is the fiiglitfal
mlenct that the pHBrence of desth aniSfr 2zij czzcamstaiices
ever imposes oaaH flRmod tt, whea the nerves of Macbedi
are strained to the utrtwii.iuL, and widuMzt anr fUniml pio-
vo<:atxoa he hears an tmearthlj Tocce czjii^ '^^eep do
more'' —
** SciE it cried, * Sleep no more ' to all tbe house :
Glamifi hatii imrrderd sleep, and rherrfbre Cawdor
ShafT sleep no more ; Macfaetii aiiall sleep zto kkxc — "
at this ghastlj moment there is a knocking heaid. The
<^pintaal and the material seem merged; and one half
fancies that it is Conscience hexself that has taken a bodily
fonn, and is beating on the gate, or that Vengeance has
already arisen and is damoroos for its victim.
'"Whence is that knocking?' dies Madxth.
* Hem 13^1 with me, wiien erexj noise af^pals me? ' "
It comes again, and his wife now hears it, and recognizes
it as made at the south entry. To her with her marvellous
self-command it is intelligible enough ; but even for her how
terrible, and, as in due time appeais, how burnt in on the
memory this first arrival of the outer world, now that the
ojd conditions of her life are all deranged and convulsed.
" I hear a knocking
At the South entry ; retire we to our chamber ;
A little water clears us of this deed ;
How easy is it then ! your constancy
Hath left you unattended [Knocking wiikin]
Hark ! more knocking.
Oet on your night-gown, lest occasion call us,
And show us to be watchers. Be not lost
So poorly in your thoughts.
Macbeth, To know my deed, 'twere best not know m3rself.
[Knocking within'\
Wake Duncan with thy knocking ! I would thou couldst ! "
And then, as he leaves the stage, " Enter a Porter," the
• THE PORTER IN MACBETH, 277
knocking continuing with slight intermissions ; and at last,
when the door is opened, Macduff interrogates the opener
as to his lying so late. And when Macbeth appears, after
whom he is zX. the moment inquiring, he says,
" Our knocking has awaked him ; here he comes."
Later on in the play, when Lady Macbeth's overtasked
physique gives way under the pressure of vast and truceless
anxieties, and reason dethroned, we see something of the
impressions which, in spite of herself, have been stamped
and branded upon her mind; we learn. how that knocking
thrilled and pierced her too. " To bed, to bed ! " she ex-
claims, in th^ awful scene of the delirium ; " there's knock-
ing at the gate ; come, conie, come, give me your hand."
The knocking scene, then, is of no trivial importance.^
But with the knocking the Porter is inseparably associated.
If we retain it, we must retain him. And if we retain him,
he must * surely make a speech of some sort ; or are we to
picture to ourselves a profoundly dumb functionary ? Are
we to conceive him as crossing the stage, thinking a great
deal but saying nothing? — nodding perhaps with all the
amazing volubiUty of Sheridan's Lord Burleigh, or brandish-
ing his keya with a mysterious cunning, or perhaps rushing
headlong to his post as if his life was at stake, but with his
tongue fast tied and bound ? There is probably no student
of Shakespeare who is prepared to accept such a pheno-
menon. Clearly, then, the Porter speaks, to whatever
effect.
(ii.) That some speech of a lighter kind is necessary to relieve
the surrounding horror. In the scene that includes the
enactment of Duncan's murder, the latter part of which
* See On the knocking at the gaie in Macbeth^ De Quincey*s Works,
xiii. 192-8, ed. 1863.
278 ESf^AYS AND NOTES, •
has already been discussed and quoted, the intensity of the
Tragedy reaches the highest possible point of endurance.
Such is the mighty power of the dramatist, that we find our-
selves transported into the midst of the scenes he portrays.
They are not images for us, but realities. We verily see
Macbeth pass into the King's chamber, and share his
fi'ightful excitement. " The owls scream, and the crickets
cry." And we hear one " laugh in 's sleep," and one cry
" Murder." And the wild weird fancies that overcome him
are vivid with us too, and the air is filled with ominous
visions and ghastly voices, and the shadows of horror encom-
pass us round as with a cloak. We reach the ne plus ultra
of dramatic terror. Nature can bear no njore. We cannot
breathe in so direful an atmosphere. The darkness is crush-
ing us like a weight. " Tearfulness and trembling are come
upon us ; and a horrible dread " threatens to " overwhelm
us."
As between th« sublime and the ridiculous,, so between
•
pleasure and pain there is but one step. But the great artist
never takes this step. The pleasure he imparts is often
strange and inexplicable, and not to be defined ; but it is
pleasure. When we speak of his moving terror in us, we use
the word in a modified sense. It is an inferior and a coarser
art that thrills with positive fear and affright. If the old
story is true that the Furies of -^schylus were so dreadful ^
^ They might well be so if they answered to the Priestess's description
of them : —
irpotfQiv Be ravSpog tovBe BavfiarrTOQ Xox^Q
EV^H yvvaucSiv iv BpovoKTiv ^fjisvoQ.
ovToi yvvcuKaq aXXd Topyovag Xtyw,
OT^B* avTE TopydoKTiv ukclgo) Tviroig.
eldov TOT iidi] ^ivkutg ysypafifisvag
SsiTTvov <f>tpov(faQ' aTTTipol yt fiijv idiiv
alrai, fikXcuvcu d^ Ig to irav pdeKutcrpoTroc
THE PORTER IN MACBETH, 279
«
to see that women in his audience were thrown into fits and
convulsions, then the representation was not truly artistic,
but rude. Certainly Shakespeare does not ever so miscom-
prehend his craft. He has the strength of a giant, but he
does not use it as a giant. *He understands and he observes
the proper limits within which his power may be exercised.
There was a certain profound humanity in him which for-
bade all idle torturing of those whom his irresistible fascina-
tion placed at his mercy. And so in his excitement of the
feelings he knew when to stay his hand, and he acted faith-
fully according to his knowledge. He does not turn plea-
sura into pain by an excessive prolongation of any state of
extreme emotion.
Now if ever in the plays of Shakespeare some relaxation
is needed for the nerves tense and strained to the utmost, if
ever some respite and repose are due to prevent the high
mysterious delight which it is the province of the artist to
kindle within us, corrupting into a morbid panic, if ever, as
we read or listen, one^ heart threatens to suspend its beat-
ing, and a very palsy seems imminent, should the awful
suspense be protracted, it is so in the terrible scene now
before us. In Davenant*s version of the play, in which all
the vigour of the context is miserably weakened and diluted,
no such imperious necessity exists. But I submit that ^ny
peyKovm S* ov TrXArouri ^veidftamv
kK S* bn'fiartay \£ipov<Ti ^v(r0iX^ Xi/3a*
cat KOfffioQ ovTe irpbg 9e&v aydXfiaTa
^^kf^tlv ducaiog ovi' Ig dvOpt^irtov (rreyac, jc.r.X.
Eum, 46-56.
* The appearance they have in ^Eschylus was more or less retained by
the poets of later times. . . . On tfie stage, however, and in works of
art, their fearful appearance was greatly softened down,' &c. See art.
" Eumenides" in Smith's Did, of Greek and Roman Biog, and Myth, .^
vol. iL
28o ESSA ys AND NOTES,
one of imagination, who studies this, scene as we have it with
all his power, who realizes it in all its finished terribleness,
and is keenly sensible of the darkness of it, as of a darkness
that may be felt, will be truly thankful for a temporary release
and diversion.
**Neque semper arcum
Tendit Apollo."
A monotony of horror cannot be sustained. In«that appal-
ling night scene the very air seems poisoned ; and any dis-
turbance of it is infinitely welcome. The sound of a fi'esh
voice, after we have listened so long to that guilty conference,
is a very cordial. If it would be going too far to say, with
an important alteration of the poet's words, that
** We must laugh or we must die,"
one may fairly maintain that the terror must be drawn out
no further, or our sensibilities will be either numbed and
stupified, or roused into a wild fever of excitation.
That this view — that some relief is^ indispensable — is not
an idle conjecture, founded on an exaggerated estimate of
the fearfulness of the murder scene, is curiously illustrated
by the experience of one who attempted to thoroughly study
that scene apart from its surroundings. Mrs. Siddons, so
studying it, found the horrors of it completely overcome
her. The following is the account she herself gives of the
result of such an isolation : —
"It was my custom to study my characters at night, when
all the domestic cares and business of the day were over.
On the night preceding that pn which I was to appear in this
part for the first time, I shut myself up, as usual, when all
the family were retired, and commenced my study of Lady
Macbeth. As the character is very short, I thought I should
soon accomplish it. Being then only twenty years of age, I
THE PORTER IN MACBETH, 281
believed, as many others do believe, that little more was
necessary than to get the words into my head ; for the neces-
sity of discrimination, and the development of character, at
that time of my life had scarcely entered tny imagination.
But to proceed. I went on with tolerable composure in the
silence of the night (a night I can never forget) till I came
to the assassination scene, when the horrors of the scene rose
to a degree that made it impossible for me to get farther. I
snatched up my candle, and hurried out of the room in a
paroxysm of terror. My dress was of silk, and the rustling of it,
as I ascended the stairs to go to bed, seemed to my panic-
struck fancy like the movement of a spectre pursuing me.
At last I reached my chamber, where I found my husband
fast asleep. I clapt my candlestick down upon the table
without the power of putting the candle out ; and I threw
myself on my bed, without daring to stay even to take off my
clothes." ^
(iii.) Some lighter speech is necessary according to the law of
contrast elsewhere observed by Shakespeare, Perhaps there is*
no characteristic of th ^Romantic drama more striking than
the frequent or rather the habitual, juxta-position of oppo-
sites. It delights in the meeting of extremes. ' The Tragi-
comedy, or Comi-Tragedy, was a form of its own peculiar
invention. The Masque had its Antimasque. This law of
contrast may seem at first sight identical with the law of relief
just discussed. But it is not soi It springs not from the
practical restraints of the drama in its demands upon human
endurance, as does that law of relief, but from far wider con-
siderations. It springs from the grand ambition of Teutonic
art to embrace in its representation life in all its length and
' See Campbell's Life of Mrs, SiddonSy ed. 1839, p. 184. The
passage m%y also be found in «Knight*s Cabinet Edition of Shakespeare,
ix. 4.
282 £SSA YS AND NOTES,
breadth. This art is not content with a mere excerpt from
life, a mere fragment, a single side of life, as the phrase is.
It yearns to comprehend life in its totality. It would put its
arms round the whole world — 2l girdle around the entire
earth. The artist, if you think of him as a reaper going
forth with his scythe, will not be confined to this single acre
or that. He must have free scope, and he will gather his
harvest everywhere. Of an audaciously aspiring soul, he will
hot acknowledge the artificial barriers that are reared around
him. And as he gazes at life as a whole, he sees it full of
amazing contrasts, aftd the most fantastic paradoxes, and it
is life he aims at portraying, this oxymoron life, as the gram-
marians might call it, so bitter-sweet, so teeming with strange
reverses, so dull and so bright, so low and so lofty, so mean,
so noble. To the true humorist these various shades and
colours are inextricably interwoven. He cares nothing for the
Superficial distinctions that pass current around him. For him
there is a transcendent unity that 'binds all things together.
He does not trouble fiimself about the labels that are placed
by conventional persons on the Iferious departments of
existence. He laughs everywhere, and he cries everywhere.
It is all infinitely sad, and infinitely comic. Heraclitus
and Democritus meet in him. As you look at him you
cannot say whether his eyes are filled with tears or with
smiles. The beauty of summer and the bleakness of winter,
the gaiety of youth and the torpor of age, the gladness of
life and the dulness of death ; — these are omnipresent
with him. And so to him there is nothing shocking or ab-
horrent in the iriter-proximities of things apparently alien to
each other. For him the very jaws of death are capable of
laughter. •
And so in the Shakespearian drama we find strange neigh-
bourhoods. Jesters and jestings in the midsf of that
THE PORTER IN MACBETH. 283
Stupendous storm in King Lear} In Hamlet the grave-
digger is one with the clown ! In Othello, amidst all its
bitter earnest, there are foolings and railleries. In fact,
Macbeth would be unique amongst the tragedies of Shake-
speare if the comic element were utterly absent from it.
This law of contrast might be supported also from a
purely aesthetic point of view, no less than that of truth-
fulness to nature; and we might *see in this mattter as in
others how
** Beauty is truth, truth beauty — that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know ; "
and be reminded of that fine mandate delivered to poets by
one, herself, of no mean poetic rank :
. . ** Hold, in high poejtic duty.
Truest Truth, the fairest Beauty."
(iv.) The Speech of the Porter is dramatically relevant. In
order to justify this speech as it stands, it is not enough to
point out, as I have tried to do, the general laws of relief
and contrast by which Shakespeare works. For in his modes
of providing relief and contrast he does not proceed reck-
lessly. He does not ignore harmony when he aims at
securing variety. There is a real concord in the seeming
discord. All things work together to one general effect.
Amidst apparent confusion and chaos there is absolute
subordination and symmetry.
" Many things, having full reference
To one consent, may work contrariously :
As many arrows loosed several ways
* "He complained of the Fool in Lear, I observed that he seemed
to give a terrible wildness to the distress ; but still he complained.*'
See Wordsworth's Notes of his conversations with Klopstock. Words-
worth^ s Memoirs y i. 130, or Coleridge's Biographia Literaria^ S||yrane^s
Letters, iii. p. 172 of the one-votumed edition.
284 ESSAYS AND NOTES,
Come to one mark ; as many ways meet in one town ;
As many fresh streams meet in one salt se^ ;
As many lines close in the dial's centre.'
a
Now, is the Porter's speech incurably discrepant and incon-
gruous with the play of which it is a part ?
"After aU," says Bodenstedt, "his uncouth comicality
has a tragic background ;^he never dreams, while imagining
himself a porter of hell-gate, of how near he comes to the
truth. What are all these petty sinners, who go to the ever-
lasting bon-fire, compared with those great criminals whose
gates he guards ! "
" Yet, at all events," says Gervinus of this soliloquy, after
mentioning, as we have seen above, the theory of those who
would excise it, " it is not inappropriate ; there is an un-
comfortable joviality which' by way of contrast is very suit-
able to the circumstances, when the drunken warder, whom
Duncan's gifts or festivities of the evening have left in a
state of excitement, calls his post * hell-gate,' in a speech in
which every allusion bears point"
Surely what these two comments put forward must have
occurred to every thoughtful reader. The whole speech of
the Porter is in fact a piece of powerful irony, " If a man
were porter of hell-gate." But is this man not so ? What
then is hell? and where are its gates? and what is there
within them ? What of the " scorpions," of which Macbeth's
mind is presently full? Knowing what we know of the
hideous doings that night has witnessed in his castle, may
we not well say : " How dreadful is this place ! This is
none other but the house of the devil, and this is the gate
of hell ? "
It may be well to notice here that the Porter of Hell was
a not ^^nfamiliar figure in the old Mysteries. We find in
Virgil, indeed, what might have suggested some such oflScial
THE PORTER IN MACBETH, • 285
to the medieval mind, if any suggestion were necessary.
Virgil speaks of Cerberus as " janitor " {^n. vi. 400) and as
"janitor Orci." (lb, viii. 296.) So Silius after him speaks
of "Stygius Janitor" (Punic, iii. 35); and so Fletcher in
his Honest Man^s Fortune (III. ii.) of " hell's three-headed
porter." But no classical suggestion was necessary for such
a creation. It was natural enough, when so much was
talked of St. Peter with his keys keeping the gate of Heaven,
that there should be conceived an infernal counterpart of
that celestial functionary. In the Coventry Mysteries^ Belial
seems serving in this capacity ; at least it is he who, when
the **Sowle," "Anima Christi," "goth to helle gatys, and
seyth, *Attollite portas, principes, vestras, et elevamifti,
portae etemales, et introibit Rex Gloriae.* " —
" Ondothe yoiye gatys of sorwatorie I
On mannys sowle I haue memorie
Here comjrth now the kynge of glorye,
These gates for to brekd I
Ye develys that am here withiune,
Helle gatys ye xal unpynne,
I xal delyvere mannys kynne ;
From wo I wole hem wreke. — "
it is " Belyalle " who on this summons exclaims :
" Alas I alas I out & harrow I
Onto thi byddynge must we bow,
That thou art God now do we know ;
Of the had we grett dowte.
Agens the may no thynge stonde,
AUe thynge obeyth to thyn honde ;
Bothe hevyn & helle, watyr & londe,
Alle thynge most to the lowte."
Belial, perhaps, is " the other devil " in the Porter's speech!
In a print engraved for Hearhe from an old drawing we
286 ESSA YS AND NOTES,
have a portrait of this gate-keeper. It represents that
Harrowing of Hell which is dramatized in the Coventry
Mysteries. Christ is in the act of releasing various souls
from the mouth of " the pit," to the severe ainnoyance of the
appointed Custodian, who appears to be blowing a horn as
a signal of alarm. Above his head is the legend, " Out
out aroynt."^ In Heywood's Four F^s the Pardoner tells
how he was anxious to find out in what estate stood the soul
of a female friend who had died suddenly. His knowledge
of her, as it would seem, not leading him to look for her in
Paradise, he proceeded to Purgatory, and not finding her
there he went to HelL
** And first to the devil that kept the gate
I came, and spake after this rate :
* All hail, Sir Devil,' and made low courtesy;
* Welcome,' quoth he thus smilingly.
He knew me well, and I at last
Remembered Him since long time past :
For as good hap would have it chance,
This devil and I were of old acquaintance ;
For oft in the play of Corpus Christi
He hath played the devil at Coventry.
By his acquaintance and my behaviour
He showed to me a right friendly favour ;
And to make my return the shorter,
I said to the devil, ' Good Master POrter
For all old love, if it be in your power
Help me to speak with my lord and your.*
* Be sure,' quoth he, * no tongue can tell
What time thou couldst have come so well ;
For as on this day Lucifer fell,
Which is our festival in hell.
Nothing unreasonable craved this day *
That shall in hell have any nay.
* A reprint of this grotesque picture may be seen in Hone's Ancutit
Mysteries described.
THE PORTER IN MACBETH. 287
But yet.beware thou come not in
Tin time thou may thy passport win," * &c,
(v.) Are tJie style and language of the Porter^s speech
Shakespearian ?
Surely the fancy, which is the main part of the Porter's
speech, must be allowed ,to be eminently after the manner
of Shakespeare. He was well acquainted with the older
stage, as his direct references to it show, as those to the
Vice in Twelfth Nighty IV. ii. ; i Henry /F., II. iv. ; 2
Henry IV,y III. ii. ; Richard IH, III. i. ; Hamlet^ III. iv. ;
and this conception of an infernal janitor is just such a
piece of antique realism as he would delight in. He has it
elsewhere; see Othello^ IV. ii. 90, where Othello cries out
to Emilia :
" You, mistress.
That have the office opposite to St. Peter,
And keep the gate of hell."
The manner in which Macduff " draws out " the Porter is
exactly like that of Shakespeare in similar circumstances
elsewhere. " What three things does* drink especially pro-
vpke ? " says Macduff^ and then the Porter delivers himself
of his foolery, which is coarse enough, and to our taste
highly offensive, it must be allowed. Compare the way in
which Orlando is made to elicit the wit of Rosalind in As
You Like It, III. ii. 323, et seq., &c. If this, likeness of
manner has no great positive, yet it has some negative value.
We see that the manner is not un-Shakespearian, if it cannot
* See \{2j\\ii^s DodsUys Old Plays ^ L 373-4; see also, ib. ii. 171,
The Nice Wanton ;— '
*' I would not pass
So that I might bear a rule in hell by the mass,
To toss firebrands at these pennyfathers* pates
/ would be porter f and receive them at the gates ;
In boiling lead and brimstone I would seeth them each one."
288 ESSAYS AND NOTES,
be pronounced definitely Shakespearian ; and we need not
go to Middleton's plays, for an illustration of it.
The passage is written in the rhythmic, or " numerous,"
prose, that is so favourite a form with Shakespeare. Compare
it in this respect, for instance, with Mrs. Quickl/s account
of Falstaflf's end. See Hen, F., II. iii. 9-28.
And so for the language, there is certainly nothing in it
un-Shakespearian. The use of " old " in " old turning of
the key" occurs in 2 Henry /F., II. iv. 21, ^^oid Vtis;"
The Merry Wives of Windsor, I. iv. 5, " an old abusing of
God's patience and the king's English ; " Much Ado about
Nothing, V. ii. 98, ** yonder's old coil at home ; " equivocation
in Hamlet, V. i. 149 ; French Hose in Henry V., III. viL
56 ; comp. Merchant of Venice, I. ii. 80. Devil-porter it is
according to a very frequent Shakespearian construction, as
** prince it," in Cymbeline, III. iii. 85 ; "xiukes it," in
Measure for Measure, III. ii. 100. Compare, especially,
" I cannot daub it farther," iii King Lear, IV. i. 54 ; and
" I'll queen it no inch farther," in Winter's Tale, IV. iv.
460. •
The most striking phrase in the passage is certainly " the
primrose way to the everlasting bonfire ; " and in Hamlet
(I. .iii. 50) Ophelia speaks of " the primrose path of dali-
ance." See also AWs Well that Ends Well, IV. v.: "I
am for the house with the narrow gate, which I •take to be
too little for pomp to enter : some that humble themselves
may ; but the many will be too chill and tender, and they'll
be for the flowery way that leads to the broad gate and the
great fire."
I have not been careful to allude in this Paper to what is
commonly said as to the disputed passage by those who
allow it to be by Shakespeare, that it was inserted for the
sake of the groundlings, or the gods, as we should say,
THE PORTER IN MACBETH. 289
•
because I am not inclined to think that Shakespeare would
have made any undue sacrifice to that part of his audience.
They were certainly to be considered by a theatrical writer,
and certainly Shakespeare did not forget them. But to sup-
pose that he would have glaringly disfigured — ^if the passage
is to be regarded a disfigurement — one of the greatest
passages of his art from any such consideration, is surely
audacious and extravagant. Moreover, is it so certain that
such an interruption of the terror would have gratified the
"groundling?" Would not the genuine animal — and in-
dividuals of his species were and are to be found in other
parts of the theatre besides that firom which he derives his
name — have rather had
" On horror's head horror accumulate ? " —
the darkness deepened, his blood yet more severely chilled
his every hair made to stand on end ? The thorough-bred
sensationalist would surely vote the Porter to be an ob-
noxious intrusion. He would long for a draught of raw
terror, and it is from such a potation that the Porter debars
him.
The argument on which the rejectors of the passage take
their stand is the intrinsic inferiority of it. An unsatisfac-
tory argument It involves two questions : First, is the in-
feriority of it so signal and admitted? and, secondly, if
it is so, yet is the passage therefore not by Shakespeare ?
As to the former question, without contending that the
soliloquy is a masterpiece of comedy, and the following
dialogue a supreme flight of wit, yet surely the Porter holds
his own well enough as compared with corresponding
persons in other plays. Is the wit of the grave-digger in
Hamlet y for example, so very superior? Again, have those
who thus condemn him taken well into account that co-
u
■ »4.
290 £SSA YS AND NOTES.
herence of his speech with the main action of the drama,
which has been dwelt upon above? With regard to the
second question, suppose the inferiority of the Porter be
conceded, are we to believe that Shakespeare is always
equal to himself — ^that he is always at his best, and never
slumbers nor sleeps? "Interdum dormitat Homerus."
. ^ ^^ Homer is sometimes caught napping. But Shakespeare
never? No one would deliberately say so; and yet per-
petually critics argue on this presumption. If anything dis-
tinctly un-Shakespearian, or thought to be un-Shakespearian,
can be pointed out either in the language or the style ot the
thought or the connection, then of the authenticity of the
passage containing it our suspicions may be justly encou-
raged. But we cannot be too cautious in condemning a
passage simply because it seems to us comparatively weak
and forceless. Our eyes may not be good. And, if they are
ever so good, yet it must be remembered that in Shake-
speare's life, no less than in the lives of lesser men, there
must have been times when all the wheels of his being were
slow, when the " nimble spirits " seemed prisoned ^ up in
the arteries, and the divine energy of his genius fainted and
languished.
The general conclusion justified by what has been ad-
vanced in the course of this paper seems to me to be this :
that the Porter is undoubtedly a part of the original play, and
that the general conception of his speech is certainly Shake-
speare's : with regard to the expression, that part of it is
most certainly Shakespeare's, and, for the rest, no suflficient
reason has yet been urged to countenance any doubt that it
too is by Shakespeare.
1 <<
Poysons up," in the 1623 Fol.
MACBETH A GOOD CHURCHMAN. 291
XXVI.
MACBETH A GOOD CHURCHMAN.
(From the Academy for March 2, 1878.)
IT may be a sarisfaction to some minds to be assured that,
after all, Macbeth was a good Churchman. Shakespeare
has overlooked this side of his character, though Holinshed
has recorded it, and the fact is verily so, as was long since
remarked by Mr. J. H. Burton. What I wish now to point out
is the mention of Macbeth in this aspect in a famous Elizabe-
than work, even in Laws of the Ecclesiastical Polity, " Will
any man deny that the Church doth need the rod of corporal
punishment to keep her children in obedience withal ? Such
a law as Macabeus made among the Scots, that he which con-
tinued an Excommunicate two years together, and reconciled
not himself to the Church, should forfeit all his goods and
possessions." Keble's note quotes from Boece the Latin of
this, as Hooker thinks, commendable enactment: — "Qui
pontificis authoritatem annum totium execratus contemp-
serit neque se interim reconciliavit, nostis reipublicae habe-
tor ; qui vero duos annos in ea contumacia perseveravit for-
tunis omnibus multator/'
292 ESSA YS AND NOTES.
XXVII.
"THE COAL OF FIRE UPON THE ICE."
*
(From the Academy for July 20, 1878.)
TH£R£ being other reasons for supposing that Shake-
spear^ wrote Coriolanus in 1608, I may perhaps point
out that there is in it what may be a reference to the famous
frost of 1607-8, when fires were lighted on the Thames.
Says Marcius, in his favourite vein of contempt for the
commons : —
•* You are no surer, no.
Than is the coed of fire upon the ice
Or hailstcmes in the sun."
It must be allowed that this is a somewhat out-of-the-way
image. Coals on ice are not usually a common spectacle ;
but it would seem they were so in the winter of 1607-8, and
at that time the image would be by no means far-fetched or
unfamiliar ; it would, in fact, be obviously suggested. Of
course one would lay no great stress on it if there was nothing
else to connect the play with that time; but there being
other things that so connect it, the allusion may perhaps be
taken as confirmatory.
"Above Westminster," writes Chamberlain to Carleton,
January 8th, 1607-8, " the Thames is quite frozen over, and
the Archbishop came from Lambeth on Twelfth Day over
the ice to Court Many fantastical experiments are daily
put in practice, as certain youths burnt a gallon of wine upon
the ice, and made all the passengers partakers."
" THE COAL OF FIRE UPON THE ICE:' 293
An account of this frost, written during its prevalence, is
given in a tract called " The Great Frost : Cold Doings in
London, a Dialogue," reprinted by Mr. Arber in his most
useful collection, An English Garner^ Vol. I.— a volume soon,
we hope, to be followed by others not less valuable. The
citizen in this dialogue tells — to quote a side-note — of beer,
ale, wine, victuals, and fires on the Thames. " Are you cold
with going over ? " runs the text, " You shall, ere you come
to the middle of the river spy som$ ready with pans of coals
to warm your fingers." I will just mention that the passage
in this tract : " Amongst many other things upon the frozen
Thames .... It was a marvellous deliverance," pp. 97-9
of Mr. Arber's reprint, is evidently out of its place.
294 £SSA YS AND NOTES.
XXVIII.
"THE WASHING OF TEN TIDES."
(From the Academy for Sept. i, 1877. )
TURNING over, the other day, Murray's Handbook of
Kent, I read : — " Execution Dock, Wapping, was the
usual place at which pirates and persons committing capital
crimes at sea were hung at low-water mark, there to remain
till three tides had overflowed them," and at once Antonio's
kindly wish for the Boatswain in the Tempest came into my
mind as interpreted or illustrated by the custom described.
It seems unlikely that this suggestion should not have been
made before, but I do not myself remember having seen it.
Nor, I find, does Dr. Elze, whom I have to thank for a
copy of certain Noten und Conjecturen zu neu-englischen Dich-
tem. The same idea has occurred to him, prompted by a
passage in Harrison's Description of England: —
** Pirates and robbers by sea are condemned in the Court
of the Admiraltie, and hanged on the shore at low-water
mark, where they are left till three tides have overwashed
them."
Evidently Antonio's phrase is a mere exaggeration of such
a sentence. For such a " wide-chapped rascal " as the
Boatswain, three tide washings are not enough — let him have
ten.
Here is another allusion to this form of punishment, from
a well-known play, Green's Tu quoque; or^ The City Gallant,
Staines is dismissing his faithful servant Bubble : —
" THE WASHING OF TEN TIDESJ* 295
** Bub, But, master, wherefore should we be parted ?
Staines, Because my fortunes are desperate, thine ar^ hopeful.
Bub, Why, whither do you mean to go, master ?
Staines, Why, to sea.
Bub, To sea ! Lord bless us, methinks I hear of a tempest already.
But what will you do at sea?
Staines, Why, as other gallants do that are spent — turn pirate.
Bub, O master, have the grace of Wapping before your eyes, remem-
ber a high tide ; give not your friends cause to wet their handkerchiefs.
Nay, master, I'll tell you a better course than so ; you and I will go
and rob my unde ; if we *scape, we*ll domineer together ; if we be
taken, we'll hang together at Tyburn ; that's the warmer gallows of
the two."
Stow — this reference is given in Hazlitt's Dodslefs Old
English Plays, xi., 188 — ^points out *' the usual place of exe-
cution for hanging of Pirates and Sea-rovers at the low-water
mark," there to remain till three tides had overflowed them.
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tions simply delicious.' — yolm Bull.
JAN OF THE WINDMILL; a Story of the Plains. With
II Illustrations by Helen Allingham. 2nd Edition, 5^.
' It is a long time since we have read anything in its way so good. . . . Such
a book is like a day in June— as sweet and as wholesome as anythmg can be . . .
Good as Miss Alcott's breezy stories are, even they are but juvenile beside such
writing as this.' — American Church Union,
* " Jsui of the Windmill" is a delightful story for children and other people.
. . . The atmosphere of country life — " the very air about the door made dusty
with the floating meal " — breathes freshly in the book^ and the rural scenes are
not unworthy of George Sand, if George Sand wrote for Us Petites filles. The
growth of the hero's artistic power is as interesting as the lives of old painters.'-
AccuUmjft
20 GeorgB Bell and Sons*
By Mrs, Ewing — Continued.
MRS. OVERTHEWAVS REMEMBRANCES. lUustrated
with lo fine Full-page Engravings on Wood, after Drawings by
Pasquier and Wolf, and Design on the Cover by Miss Pym. 3rd
Edition.
' It is not often nowadays the privilege of a critic to grow enthusiastic over a
new work ; and the rarity of the occasion that calls form the delight is i^t to
lead one into the sin of hyperbole. And yet we think we shall not be accosed of
extravagance when we say that, without exception, "Mrs. Overtheway's Re-
membrances " is the most delightful work avowedly written for chUdren that we
have ever read. There are passages in this book which the genitis of George
Eliot would be proud to own It is full of a peculiar, heart-stirring pathos
of its own, which culminates in the last pages, when Ida finds that her faiher is
not dead. The book is one that may be recurred to often, and always with the
same delight. We predict for it a great popularity.' — Leader,
A GREAT EMERGENCY, and other Tales. With 4 Illustra-
tions, and Design on the Cover by Miss Pym. ^r.
' Never has Mrs. Ewing published a more charming volume of stories, and
that is saying a very great deal. From the first to the last the book overflows
with the strange knowledge of child-nature whidi so rarely survives childhood ;
and, moreover, with inexhaustible quiet htunour, which is never anything but
innocent and well-bred, never priggish, and never clumsy.' — Academy,
THE BROWNIES, and other Tales. Illustrated by George
Cruikshank. 3rd Edition. Imp. i6mo. 5^.
Mrs. Ewing elves us some really charming writing. While her first story
most prettily teaches children how much they can do to help their parents, the
immediate result will be, we fear, anything but good. For if a child once begins
*' The Brownies," it will get so deeply interested in it, that when bed-time comes
it will altogether forget the moral, and will weary its parents with importunities
for just a few minutes more to see how everything ends. The frontispiece, by
the old friend of our childhood, George Cruikshank, is no less pretty than the
story,' — Saturday Review.
LOB-LIE-BY-THE-FIRE ; or, the Luck of Lingborough. And
other Tales. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. and Edition.
Imp. i6mo. 5^.
*A charming tale by another of those clever writers, thanks to whom the
children are now really better served than their neighbours.' — Spectator.
\ Mrs. Ewing has written as good a story as her *' Brownies," and that is
saying a great deal. " Lob-lie-by-the-fire " has humour and pathos, and teaches
what is right without making children think they are reading a sermon.* —
Saturday Review,
MELCHIOR'S DREAM, and other Tales. Illustrated. 4th
Edition, Fcap. 8vo. 3J. 6d,
•"Melchior's Dream" is an exqtusite litde story, charming by original
htmiour, buoyant spirits, and tender ^Ath.os,'—Ath€naum,
\
V^
Selected Works, 21
By F, M, Peardy Author of ^ UnawareSy ^The Rose
Garden,^ ^CartouchCy dr'c,
MOTHER MOLLY. A Story for Young People. With 8
Illustrations. Small post 8vo. 5^.
I The story is to other Christmas books what Mr. Blackmore's stories are to
ordinary novels. It is fresh, a little quaint, and is, in fact, a charming ideal of
the latter end of the ast centvry.' —Standard.
THROUGH ROUGH WATERS. A Story for Young People.
With II Illustrations. Small post 8vo. sr.
* This is a tale of the French Revolution, well written, in a style suitable for
young people : an interesting little story.' — Examiner.
'It IS a book intended for young readers, and they may be thankful to light
upon it instead of the sentimental twaddle with which they are so often supplied.'
— Academy.
PRINCESS ALETHEA: a Story for Young People. With
Eight Illustrations by J. D. Watson. Small post 8vo. 55.
* A pretty story of the tjrpe familiar to the readers of Miss Yonge.' —
Athenetum.
*A pleasant, wholesome, story, full of interest, and certain to attract and
benefit the young people for whom it has been written.' — Scotsman,
Uniform ivith the above,
HECTOR : a Story for Young People. By Flora Shaw, Author
of • Castle Blair,' &c, Witti Ei^t Illustrations by W. J. Hen-
nessey. Small post 8vo. 5J.
Hector, the brave, bright Enelish boy, with his high thoughts, his love of the
wild birds, his respect for honest labour, and^ his chivalrous sjrmpathy with the
distressed, is^ exactly the ti^pc of hero that it is good for children to have before
them, and will meet with sympathy and admiration ;^ while the scrapes he falls
into so readily will make the childKn feel that there is no "goodliness " in him to
awake their antagonism.' — Academy,
By Mrs. O'Reilly.
' Mrs. O'Reilly's works need no commendation . . . the stvle is so goocl« the
narratiTe so enfrossing, and the tone so excellent.' — J§hn Bull,
DAISY'S COMPANIONS; or, Scenes from ChUd life. A
Story for Little Girls. With 8 Illustrations. 3rd Edit. i6mo. af. 6</.
' I< anybody wants a pretty little present for a pretty (and good) little
danghter, or a niece or grand-daughter, we cannot recommend a bettor or tastier
one than "Daisy's Companions." ^TVmm.
LITTLE PRESCRIPTION, and other Tales. With 6 Hlus-
trations by W. H. Pbthxeick and others. i6mo. 2f. 64^
' A worthy saccessor of some charming Uttle volumes of the same kind. . • •
The tale from which the title is taken u for its grace and pathos an especial
iKWoAtt! Spectator,
22
George Bell and Sons'
By Mrs. O'Reilly— Continued.
CICELY'S CHOICE. A Story for Girls. With a FrontUpiece
by J. A. Pasquier. Fcap. 8vo. gilt edges, y. 6d,
' A pleasant story. ... It is a book for girls, and grown people will also enjoy
reading it.' — Athetueum.
* A pleasant, well-written, interesting story, likely to be acc^table to 3roung
people who are in their teens.' — Scotsman,
GILES'S MINORITY ; or, Scenes at the Red House. With
8 Illustrations. i6mo. 2J. 6d.
•In one of our former reviews we praised "Deborah's Drawer." "Giles's
Minority " no less deserves our goodwill. It is a picture <^ school-room life, and
is so w«ll drawn that grown-up readers may delight in it. In literary excellence
tlus little book is above most of its fellows.' — Times,
DOLL WORLD ; or, Play and Earnest. A Study ficom Real
Life. With 8 Illustrations. By C. A. Saltmarsh. i6mo. 2J. 6d.
' It is a capital child's book, and it has a charm for erown-up people also, as
the fairy haze of "lon|^-ago" brightens every page. We are not ashamed to
confess to the "thrilling interest" with which we followed the history of
" Robertina " and " Mabel." '—Athetueum,
DEBORAH'S DRAWER. With 9 Illustrations. i6mo. 2J. 6^.
' Any godmamma who wishes to buy an unusually pretty and artistically-
written eift-book for an eight-year-old pet cannot do better tbuui spend a florin fx
two on mt contents of " Aunt Deborah s Drawer." ' — Athetutum,
Captain Marry afs Books for Boys.
Uniform Illustrated Edition, neatly bound in doth, post 8vo.
3^. 6^. each ; gilt edges, 4^. 6d,
POOR JACK. With Sixteen Il-
lustrations after Designs by
Clarkson Stanfield, R.A.
THE MISSION ; or, Scenes in
Africa. With Illustrations by
ToHN Gilbert.
THE PIRATE, AND THREE
CUTTERS. With Memoir of the
Author, and 20 Steel Engravings
by Clarkson Stanfield, R.A.
Cheap Edition, without Illus-
trations, \s, 6d.
THE SETTLERS IN CANADA.
With Illustrations by Gilbert
and Dalziel.
THE PRIVATEERSMAN.
Adventures by Sea and Land
in Civil and Savage Life One
Hundred Years ago. Illustrated
with Eight Steel Engravings. .
MASTERMAN READY; or, the
Wreck of the Pacific. Embel-
lished with Ninety-three En-
gravings on Wood.
A BOY'S LOCKER. A Smaller Edition of Captain Manyat's
Books for Boys, in 12 vols. Fcap. 8vo. in a compact cl6th box, 211.
MASTERMAN READY. People's Edition, with 93 Illustra-
tions, 4to. 6^.
POOR JACK. People's Edition, 29 Illustrations, 4to. 6^.
OUR PETS AND PLAYFELLOWS IN AIR, EARTH,
AND WATER. By Gehthuue Patmohe. Wilh 4 Illustrations
by Bebtiia Patmoke, Crown Bvo. 31. dd.
FRIENDS IN FUR AND FEATHERS. By Gwynfevs.
Illusirated wilh B Full-page Engravings by F. W, Kbvl, &o. 6lh
T^j;.; — Handsomely bound, 31. 6^.
jilready chBrncttrued iame other book u the bst cat-Eod^og
;lighirul. It a Mritten an so ankltc principle, codiiisliaa of nctual
irtikh is delightful. It is Mritt
^^Uc^i ;°Ld^^?^y w^l^'t
^^E>d iliim^y^:-Sai^rday Kn
^^g By Hans
I^ffAlRY TALES AND
By Hans Christian Andersen.
FAIRY TALES AND SKETCHES. Ttanil&ted by C. C.
pEAciiEv, H. Ward. A. Plesner, &c. With 104 inaslrationi by
,.„ ..in iti= d-i"
its of AndHsen—
it pnciilaii of ttie
most hapinly tiansposf
fflneleph^'ott™!"
TALES FOR CHILDREN. With 48 Fuli-page Illustrations by
WeiiMERT, and 57 sttiall Engravings on Wood by W. Thomas.
_ A New Edition. Crown Bvo. 6j.
l^ This laiA die alrtwe vol. foitn thi most cmpieie Enallsli EdilMd of AbiJ««iiib
rWHAT SHALL WE ACT? c
■ 10 Choose. With Hints on
JAiiES. Third Edition, crown Bvo. aj. bd.
FAIRY PLAYS FOR CHILDREN. ByKATE Freilighath-
Kroekeh. Wilh Illustrations by M. StbheE. And Songs, and
Edition, u. each. Alice ; adapted, by permission, from ' Alice's
Adventures ia Wonderland.' Snowdrop. The Bear Pbince.
Jack and the Princess who newkr Laughed. The Four Plays
in I vol., clotb gilt, 41. bd.
QUESSINQ STORIES; or, The Surprising Adventures oT tlie
Man with the Eilra Pair of Eyes. By the late Archdeacon F^rb-
MAN. 4th Edition, as. 6d.
WONDER WORLD. A Collection of Fairy Tales, Old and
New. Translated from the French, German, and Danish. With
4 Coloured Illustrations and numerous Woodcuts by L. RlCHTBH,
Oscar Pletsch, and others. Royal i6mo. cloth, gilt edges, 31, 6J,
Ilwlll delight Ihl chiliiren, imd bu in il aveallhof midmn that luiylMaf
deal service whoi Ihev have grown inu> men ud vramtD:—I.itirary Wertd.
QRIMM'S GAMMER GRETHEL; or, German Fairy Tale*
and Popular Stories. Translated by Edgar Tavlor. Numerous
Woodcuts after C. CntiiKSUANK's deigns. Post Svo, 31. &f.
LITTLE PLAYS FOR LITTLE PEOPLE ; with Hints for
Drawing-room Performances. By Mra. Chisholm, Author of
■ Rana, ihe Slory ot a Frog.' i6mo. Willi tllustrations, aj ' '
ROBINSON CRUSOE. Wiih loo Illustrations, 21 Coloun
liy E, II. WrhNkkt. Crown 8vo. gill edges, 51.
THE WIDE, WIDE WORLD. By E. Wbthereli.. With h
lllustraiiQQS. Post 6vo. 3J. 6rf.
UNCLE TOM'S CABIN.
PoBi Svo, y. 6it.
KATIE; (
, Stowk. lUusttated.
Crov,
I. 6t/.
Cooper, Landseer, &c. 71. 6d.
POETRY- BOOK FOR SCHOOLS. Illustrated
highly finished Engravings by C. W. Cope, R.A., W. Helmslet,
S. Palmeh, F. Skill, G. Thomas, and H. Weir. Crown Bvo.
gill, 31. 6d. ; plain doth, 11.
GILES WITHERNE; or, Ihe Reward of Disobediwce. A
Village Talefor the Voung. Bythe Rev. J. P. ParkINson.D.C.L.
6lh Edition, Illustrated bythe Rev. F. W. MANN. Super-royal
ed.^H
1
1; ■
NURSERY CAROLS. By the late Rev. Dr. MONSKLi- Rectot
of St. Nicholas, Guildford, with upwards ot 100 lllmtratioi
LuDWiQ RtCHTCB and Oscar Plrtsch. Ijap. i6mo. 11. 6J.
iniiiiiniiiin
3 2044 018 901 231
THE BORROWER WILL BE CHARGED
AN OVERDUE FEE IF THIS BOOK IS
NOT RETURNED TO THE LIBRARY ON
OR BEFORE THE LAST DATE STAMPED
BELOW. NON-RECEIPT OF OVERDUE
NOTICES DOES NOT EXEMPT THE
BORROWER FROM OVERDUE FEES.
Harvard College WIdener Library
Cambridge, MA02138 (617)495-2413
DEC
\993
**v;vA^ AA.
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